


Doppelgängland

by kellsbells



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 48,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5977912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellsbells/pseuds/kellsbells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myka arrives home after saying goodbye to Helena in Boone. She is lost and unhappy and decides to do some inventory at the Warehouse. She passes out and wakes up in a world that’s almost exactly the same, but with some significant differences…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sistersin7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistersin7/gifts).



> This fic is one of many I’ve started as a ‘what if’ after the whole Boone thing, and it deals with the idea of parallel universes. I know there are loads of fics out there with this concept - @whiskeyadams’ “Dream a better dream” springs to mind. (You should totally read that fic if you haven’t yet – I can’t recommend it enough. It’s awesome.) But this is my take on the idea. Oh, and this is a gift for @sistersin7, to remind her that life is full of infinite possibility.

Helena had chosen Nate. She had chosen Nate, and Adelaide and a life of obscurity and mediocrity over endless wonder and saving the world. She had made her choice, and now Myka was sitting in her room at the B&B, ignoring Pete’s voice from the other side of the door as he pleaded with her to come and watch a movie with him, Claudia and Steve. 

She sat at the foot of her bed, her signed copy of “The Invisible Man” in her hands, turning it over and over. How had Helena, the adventurous, fearless author of this and so many other books, the defiant, strong woman, turned into that… whatever she had been, yesterday? A soccer mom? With a boyfriend or maybe even a husband who just had to be an accountant or a claims adjuster or something. How could she have changed so much in such a short time? The last time she’d seen Helena, it was outside the Warehouse, and the Regents had come to take Helena away for questioning - never mind that Artie had spoken up for her or whatever – they still wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to try to destroy the world again. Helena had turned, and Myka could have sworn that she mouthed “I love you,” before they cuffed her and took her to the car.

Myka was sick to her stomach at the thought of it all. She wished in some ways that she’d been brave enough to tell Helena how she felt, yesterday in Wisconsin. But she was also glad that she hadn’t, because the way Helena looked at her when she was standing on that driveway – the look on her face was something like a mixture of guilt and pity. And pity didn’t exactly shout “I love you too, Myka,” now, did it?

When she was sure that Pete and the rest of the gang were absorbed in their movie-watching, she crept down the stairs and out of the B&B, driving to the Warehouse. When she was this wound up and upset, only inventory could soothe her mind. It always had when she had worked in her dad’s store, and now the Warehouse offered her the same respite when she needed it – and often when she didn’t. 

A few hours later she was beginning to tire, so she decided to go back to the B&B to sleep. On the way back she passed the HG Wells section, and seeing the name was like a physical blow to her solar plexus. She opened the gate to the section and stood there, her heart thumping. Helena’s presence lingered here, like a whisper of perfume in the air. Her sense of humour, that smirk, that sense of adventure, of slight volatility. It was almost palpable in the air, and Myka wondered again how Helena had gone from who she used to be to who she was now. The way she had looked at Myka when they first saw her in her lab... Myka choked back a sob as she looked again at the inventions and the manuscripts that Helena had left behind. She had always meant to read the original manuscripts of Helena’s books, but now she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to. She slammed the gate shut behind her as she left, the metal rattling loudly in the vast silence of the Warehouse. She jammed her hands in her pockets and touched a piece of metal – Helena’s locket. She had meant to give it to her in Wisconsin but it had completely gone out of her head when she saw who – what – Helena had become. 

She leaned against the gate for a second, breathing deeply, and wondering what the hell she was going to do now. It had been what – eight months, since Helena had disappeared with the Regents? And all that time, Myka had been hoping. Hoping that Helena was being treated by a psychiatrist or whatever, being looked after, so that she could come back. Back to the Warehouse, and back to Myka, so they could finally talk about that “I love you,” about Helena sacrificing herself when Sykes’ bomb had gone off in the alternate timeline. She would have told Helena that she loved her too. She had wanted to tell her for so long, had hoped and wished and dreamed that Helena felt the same way, that it wasn’t just her imagination that Helena had mouthed that to her. 

She sighed out a heavy breath, and as she did, her vision started to blur, and she could hear Helena’s voice distantly. 

“Myka? Myka darling, are you okay?”

The voice sounded like it was coming from miles away, and her vision was tunnelling, suddenly. She felt her knees give way underneath her and she slipped down, back against the fence, before passing out. 

________________________________________

She woke in her bed. Well, it was almost her bed. It was her room, certainly, but with a certain amount of redecoration. There was an extra door that was half open, displaying a section of the small bathroom beyond. There was steam coming from the bathroom, which meant that Myka wasn’t alone. She tried to sit up, but was hit with a wave of dizziness so intense that she had to lie flat again, breathing deeply to avoid vomiting or passing out. 

She lay still for a long time, taking deep, long breaths, and wondering what in the holy hell had happened. When Leena knocked on the door and came in with some tea and toast, however, she scrambled back, almost falling out of the bed. 

“Myka, are you okay?” Leena asked, her face creased up in concern.

“You’re…you’re dead…” Myka said, voice trembling. She had found Leena on the Warehouse floor, seen the blood. What the hell was happening?

“I’m fine, Myka,” Leena said, reaching over to place her hand gently on Myka’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Did you have a nightmare?”

Myka shook her head mutely, and as she did so, the shower shut off. Myka saw a long, shapely leg extend from the shower cubicle before she closed her eyes tightly. That leg, if she was not very much mistaken, belonged to Helena. Helena, who was in her bathroom – a bathroom that didn’t exist – and Leena – dead Leena - was here. She must be sick. It was a fever dream. 

“Myka, darling. What’s wrong? Are you sick?” 

It was Helena’s voice, and she was touching Myka’s face. Myka tried not to, but she leaned into the contact, drawing in a sharp breath. 

“It’s okay, Leena. I’ll take it from here. Thank you for breakfast, you are wonderful,” Helena said quietly but authoritatively. 

Leena murmured that it was no problem, and Myka heard the door close behind her. Then the bed dipped next to her. 

“Myka, what on earth is going on? We were in the Warehouse, about to go home, and you collapsed. Dr Calder checked you over, but she couldn’t find anything wrong.”

Again, she touched Myka’s face, and Myka almost whimpered. It was too much, way, way too much. After Boone, after Nate, after all of it. This last few months had been such a nightmare, with Steve dying and coming back, Leena dying… and Helena touching her like this – it was too much. 

“Please, don’t…” she said in a whisper, and Helena came closer. Myka could feel Helena’s breath against her neck. 

“Don’t what, darling? What’s wrong? Please, look at me, love,” Helena said, her voice gentle. She had her hands on either side of Myka’s face, fingertips gently touching her cheek and jaw. 

Myka opened her eyes, to find Helena sitting on the bed next to her, wrapped in a grey silk robe. Her hair was wet and her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted as she looked at Myka intently in concern. 

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Wisconsin?” Myka asked, her face creased in confusion and pain. 

“Why would I be in Wisconsin, love? I don’t think we’ve ever even been to Wisconsin. Have we?” she asked, her forehead wrinkling as she thought. She ran her hand through her wet hair and as she did Myka noticed the white gold wedding band on her left hand. Her heart twisted and at the same time intense rage welled up in her.

“So you are married,” she spat. “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought we were friends, at least, Helena. You couldn’t have told me you were married, and saved me from hoping for… Goddammit, Helena. Just go, will you? I don’t know why you came here but I’m fine.”

She turned away from Helena’s confused face and gentle fingers, tears beginning to leak from her eyes. Married. Of course she was married. Because why wouldn’t she be? She was beautiful, she was smart. She certainly didn’t need to be tethered to Myka Bering, Secret Service and Warehouse Agent with no personal life worth speaking of. 

“Myka, I don’t know what the hell has gotten into you, but you know I’m married. Since you were there on my wedding day, and played quite a significant part in the ceremony yourself. Did you hit your head or something, love?” Helena asked, softly but with an edge of irritation in her voice. 

Myka turned her tear-streaked face to Helena’s. 

“I didn’t know, Helena. You could have told me. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Helena stared at her. 

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she said, shoving her hair back again in an impatient motion. Then she leaned forward and kissed Myka, moving to place herself in Myka’s lap, straddling her. She grasped the hair at the back of Myka’s neck and used it to angle her head as she dipped her tongue into Myka’s mouth. At first Myka was frozen, but when she felt Helena’s tongue against hers she couldn’t hold back. She returned the kiss, whimpering, with tears still running down her face. How could Helena be kissing her? Helena was married, to Nate whatever-the-fuck his name was, and Helena had left her. Helena had left her behind and moved on with some fucking asshole and his annoyingly smart kid, without a fucking word. 

Her rage made her grab at Helena’s hair. She bit on Helena’s bottom lip, hard, and was smugly pleased at the sharp gasp that came from Helena’s mouth. 

“God, Myka,” Helena murmured, before biting Myka’s lip just as hard. She slid her hands underneath Myka’s thighs and pulled her down so that she was on her back, before moving back on top of her to straddle her again. Her hair curtained either side of Myka’s face as she leaned down to kiss her again. 

“Helena, what…” Myka managed, before Helena was kissing her again, pulling at her curls, grabbing a handful and pulling her head the way she wanted it. She was moving in Myka’s lap and things were edging towards the point of no return. Myka couldn’t work out where this had come from, and while she didn’t want to, she knew she had to stop it. She wanted this so, so much, but it wasn’t okay. She had waited until Sam had been separated from his wife for months before she made any move towards him, and she wasn’t about to cheat with a married woman. What they’d already done was bad enough. She pushed Helena away gently, wiping her mouth absently and shaking her head. 

“No, Helena. We can’t do this. You’re married. Please, move away,” she said firmly, taking a deep breath, trying to calm her pounding heart and racing pulse. 

“Myka, what are you going on about?” Helena began, but Myka pushed at the centre of her chest again, and Helena moved off her, looking baffled. Just then there was a knock at the door. 

“Mykes! Are you okay?”

Thank God. Pete would know what to do. 

“Pete, come in!” she yelled, and Helena made a loud huffing noise before adjusting her robe to cover more of her long legs. Pete ran in wearing a suit and coat, clearly just returning from a mission. When had he had time to go on a mission?

“Mykes, what is going on? I got this really weird vibe, like not bad, exactly, but weird, and I came back from the snag right away. Steve’s gonna kill me, but I knew you needed me,” Pete said, all in a rush. He came to sit next to her on the other side of the bed from Helena and took her hand. 

“Pete, thank God you’re here. Why were you on a retrieval with Steve, anyway? Nobody told me you were going anywhere! We only got back from Wisconsin yesterday morning!” she said, indignant. 

He looked confused, and looked from her to Helena a few times. Helena shrugged, looking just as confused. 

“Mykes, we weren’t in Wisconsin. We haven’t been out on a retrieval together since – when was it, Helena?”

Helena thought for a moment. 

“Well, there was that one in Delaware when I was in London finalising the transfer of my belongings and my Visa. Was that the last one?” she asked thoughtfully, tapping a finger on her lips. 

“Yeah. Delaware. That was like, nearly two years ago. Did you fall over, Mykes? Or did you touch Dr Alzheimer’s stethoscope? I did that once and ended up in a nursing home for nearly a month…” he said, trailing off at her confused expression. 

“I don’t understand, Pete,” she said. “You’re my partner. We’ve been partners for three years.”

“No, Mykes. We were partners for over a year, and then Helena here arrived from the Bronze, and you and her have been partners since. Don’t you remember?” he asked concernedly. 

“No,” she said, and she could feel her bottom lip beginning to wobble. 

“She kept saying that I should have told her I was married, Pete. And she’s obsessed with bloody Wisconsin.”

He looked at Helena with his mouth open for a moment, and then turned to Myka again. 

“Mykes, what is going on with you? Of course you knew Helena was married. You’ve been married to her for a year now, partner. You guys pretty much U-hauled as soon as she came out of the Bronze. You called a family meeting last week at breakfast to tell us all that you were pregnant, Mykes. What’s going on with you?”

Her mouth fell open. Married – to Helena? What parallel universe was this? How the hell…

“Myka? Are you okay?” 

Helena was peering at her worriedly. 

“I’m fine, but this isn’t real. None of this is real,” Myka said, putting her head in her hands. This was crazy. 

“Agent Bering,” Mrs Frederic said, and all three of them jumped. The woman was in the corner, about as far from the door as a person could get. Not that the door was even open, anyway. 

“Yes, Mrs Frederic?” Myka said, sitting up straighter. Maybe Mrs Frederic could explain this. 

“You need to get to the Warehouse, where Dr Calder can examine you. Immediately, please. You too, Agent Wells. You might as well come along too, Agent Lattimer. Something very strange has happened here.”

They turned to exchange looks, and when they turned around again, Mrs Frederic was gone. 

“Okay. Off to the Warehouse it is, I guess,” Myka said, pushing off the covers and getting out of bed. She realised quickly that she had no idea where her clothes were, so she started opening drawers and cupboards randomly. Helena stood smoothly and opened a closet that wasn’t even there, in Myka’s real room. She took out one of Myka’s suits, handing it over wordlessly with underwear and a pair of boots. Myka went to dress in the bathroom, looking around her at the fixtures and fittings. To be fair, she reasoned, the B&B did need another bathroom. But she didn’t understand when this bathroom had sprung into being. The whole room looked different – larger – but it was still her room. She shook her head and tried to wrestle her curls into some semblance of order, finally giving up and going back into her room to find a fully dressed Helena waiting for her. 

“Do you really not remember anything about us, Myka?” Helena asked, her eyes downcast. 

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry,” she said, in a whisper. 

“It’s not your fault, darling,” Helena said softly. “Shall we go to the Warehouse and find out what’s going on?” she said, in a carefully neutral tone. Myka nodded, and they made their way downstairs and into Pete’s car. He drove them there in silence, giving Myka the occasional concerned look. 

When they arrived at the Warehouse, Myka was flanked by Helena and Pete, who took her through the umbilicus and straight to the small office where Dr Calder worked when at the Warehouse. 

“Hi, Myka,” Dr Calder said. “Mrs Frederic tells me you’re having some problems with your memory. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of it.”

“Okay,” Myka said. She looked at Helena and Pete nervously, and Dr Calder looked from her to the other two agents. 

“I think I’ll need to see Myka alone, agents,” she said, in a crisply professional tone, and Pete went to leave immediately. Helena, however, lingered. 

“Myka, are you sure you want to do this alone? You usually like me to stay with you for appointments and the like,” Helena said, her eyes appealing to Myka to let her stay. 

“I… I guess,” Myka said, shrugging a little. She didn’t mind, as long as Helena didn’t see her naked or anything. That thought made her blush slightly, so she turned her attention to Dr Calder briskly, putting it out of her mind. 

“What’s the last thing you remember, Myka?” Dr Calder asked, while attaching a blood pressure cuff to Myka’s right arm. 

“I was in the Warehouse. Sometimes I like to do inventory late at night when I can’t sleep. It helps to calm me.”

Helena nodded, as if confirming that this was something that Myka did. Myka looked at her uncertainly for a moment before continuing. 

“I was in the HG Wells section, and I was thinking… about Helena. She disappeared about 8 months ago, after the Warehouse almost exploded. I had just seen her for the first time, on a retrieval in Wisconsin.” She was blushing, and her head was starting to pound at the memory of finding Helena in Boone.

Dr Calder shared a long look with Helena, whose eyes were wide and confused. 

“Go on, Myka,” she said, after checking the blood pressure monitor and removing the cuff. 

“Okay,” Myka said, sighing. “So, I met Helena in Wisconsin. She’s living with this guy, Nate, and his daughter, Adelaide. There was an artefact there, a prehistoric hyena jawbone, that induced primal fear in the victims. Helena called us to deal with it. It turned out that it was one of the local police detectives who was using it to scare people into giving confessions. I… I tried to talk Helena into coming back, coming home, but she wouldn’t listen. She stayed there with the guy and the kid and Pete and I came back to the Warehouse. So I was doing inventory, and I stopped in the HG Wells section. I was ready to go home, and I closed the gate, and then I put my hands in my pockets,” she said, employing her eidetic memory to recall exactly what she had done. “I touched Helena’s locket – it was still in my pocket. I meant to return it to Helena but it slipped my mind, with… everything,” she said, trying to hold back tears. She still couldn’t believe it, couldn’t take it in. Helena didn’t love her, and Helena wanted to stay in Wisconsin as a soccer mom. 

“What happened when you touched the locket?” Dr Calder asked, taking Myka’s pulse and looking at her watch. 

“I started to feel dizzy, my vision got blurry around the edges, like tunnel vision. I heard Helena’s voice, and then I fell on the floor and passed out. I woke up in bed in my room – or at least, it looked like my room. Only my room doesn’t have a bathroom and it definitely doesn’t have a Helena in it,” she said. 

Helena laughed, a laugh that sounded akin to a sob. 

“Okay, Myka. Can you look at this light, please?” Dr Calder asked, checking her pupils carefully with a pen torch. 

“Well, physically you check out, Myka. But your recollection of recent history – particularly Helena’s history – is off. The Warehouse didn’t almost explode, Myka. And Helena hasn’t left the Warehouse - or you - since she was released from the Bronze Sector,” Dr Calder explained. 

“And Leena is alive,” Myka murmured. 

Dr Calder looked a little startled at that. “Yes, Leena is alive. We’ll get to that later. For now, I think we ought to check on the status of your baby, just to be on the safe side. If you’re under the influence of an artefact, we need to be sure it’s not affecting the baby.”

Baby. Pete had said that too – that she was pregnant. What the hell was going on? 

“Fine,” she said, shaking her head. “How much crazier can this day get?” she asked, half to herself. 

She went behind the small screen in the doctor’s office to strip off her clothes and put on the stupid-ass hospital robe that Dr Calder insisted on, even though she could have just pulled up her shirt, surely? She came out from behind the screen and settled herself on the couch with a slight huff. 

“Okay, Myka, just a little cold now,” Dr Calder said, putting the freezing cold gel on her lower abdomen. She moved the wand around a few times, then more carefully, staring at the screen in confusion. She did this a number of times before replacing the wand on the sonogram machine, and leaning back, looking thoroughly confused. 

“What’s wrong, Dr Calder?” Helena asked, her face falling. 

“This woman is not pregnant,” Dr Calder said eventually. “There are no signs that she was ever pregnant.”

Helena looked from Myka to Dr Calder, her mouth open. 

“How can this… she was pregnant a week ago, Dr Calder. We heard the heartbeat,” Helena said, in complete confusion. 

“I know, Helena. I was here. But this woman, whoever she is, is not pregnant. I can only conclude that she’s not Myka – or at least, she’s not our Myka.”

Helena turned to look at Myka, her face suddenly blank and set. She suddenly resembled the Helena who was ready to Trident the world into a new ice age. 

“Who are you? If you’ve hurt my wife, I will kill you myself, do you hear?”

“Calm down, Helena,” Dr Calder said quickly. “Whoever she is, she’s as confused as we are. Let me take some blood, if that’s okay, Myka, and we’ll see if we can get to the bottom of this.”

Myka nodded and extended her arm, watching Helena cautiously from the corner of her eye. It made her feel oddly better that she wasn’t the only one who was completely confused by this; even if it had turned Helena slightly homicidal. 

Three hours later, she had told her story four times; to Artie, Mrs Frederic and Claudia, and once again, in more detail, to Pete, Helena and Dr Calder. They were all now sitting in the Warehouse’s main office in a circle, discussing where they should go from here. 

“Do you still have the locket, Myka?” Dr Calder asked. “I believe it might hold the key to whatever is happening here.”

“I don’t know,” Myka said. “I was touching it and then I passed out. What was your Myka doing, Helena?” she asked, turning to Helena whose eyes were still dark and unyielding. 

“We were kissing,” she said shortly. 

“Is it possible that she touched your locket?” Myka asked, thinking. If she and the other Myka had touched the locket at the same time, perhaps it switched them between worlds. Because this was clearly not Myka’s world. She had discovered during her conversations with everyone that Walter Sykes had been apprehended before he could do any damage, Steve had never gone undercover, and Leena was alive. And Helena had never left the Warehouse, or tried to destroy the world. Pete was married to Kelly Hernandez and they had a kid, for the love of God. This was not Myka’s world. Plenty of bad things had happened here too, in the course of dealing with artefacts, but not the major events that had happened in her world. So a parallel world was the only possible explanation. 

“I suppose it is,” Helena said, thoughtfully. She fished her locket out from under her shirt, peering at it. 

“Fetch me a static bag,” she said, imperiously, to Pete. He made a face behind her back but did as she asked. She placed her locket in the bag carefully, and it did shed a few feeble sparks, but nothing happened. They all looked at Myka, and she shrugged. 

“Sorry. Still me,” she said, apologetically. 

“Okay,” Artie said sharply. “Clearly, the artefact is the locket, but what it does and how it works – well, we just don’t know. Artefacts are formed in their own way and with their own logic. We need to study this one and work out what has caused it to become an artefact. Clearly it is twinned with the one in this Myka’s world somehow, if it swapped them across universes. Claudia, I need you. And Mrs Frederic, if you sense anything about this artefact, please let us know.”

He held his hand out for the static bag, which Helena passed to him, clearly reluctantly. 

“I’ll make sure it gets back to you in one piece if at all possible, Helena,” he said, more gently than was his normal habit. She nodded curtly in acknowledgement. 

“Everybody else get back to work. Myka and Helena, you go back to the B&B. I want you out of the Warehouse for now until we know what’s going on.”

Myka nodded, and Helena did too after a moment, but she did not look pleased at the decision. 

“Come on,” she said shortly, gesturing for Myka to follow her. Myka sighed and stood, following Helena to Pete’s car. They drove home in silence, and it grew thick as Myka tried to think of something – anything – to say. She couldn’t work out what to say to this woman, who was the same woman she loved, but not, at the same time. So they drove home in silence, and Myka closed her eyes, wondering what could possibly go wrong next. 

________________________________________

Myka Bering-Wells woke up in what looked like her bed, but there was something different about the room. There was no bathroom, some of the cupboards were missing – it looked like it had when she’d moved here, before Helena came along. She looked around her in complete confusion. Had she travelled back in time? Her hand went to her abdomen automatically. Whatever had happened, it better not have affected the baby. 

She was alone, so she got out of bed carefully, noting that she was still in the same clothes she’d been wearing at the Warehouse last night, where she and Helena were doing some research on a possible artefact in Arizona. She remembered kissing Helena, and then feeling strange, and that was it. Nothing. 

She pulled on some boots and went to the old bathroom to use the toilet and wipe her face. She brushed her hair, sighing as the curls sprung out in every single possible direction. It was clearly going to be one of those days. 

She made her way downstairs, finding Pete half-asleep at the breakfast table along with Claudia, who was engrossed in something on her iPad, and Steve, who looked like he was maybe meditating while sipping chamomile tea and eating fruit salad. 

“Morning, pardner,” Pete said, tipping an imaginary hat at her. 

Partner? Since when did he call her partner? They hadn’t been partners since…

“Morning, guys. Where is Helena?” she asked, before raising any other issues – like what the hell was going on with her bedroom. 

“Er… in Wisconsin?” Pete said, confused. “Where we left her?”

Myka sat down. 

“What?” she said, with a slight snap in her voice. “What is my wife doing in Wisconsin? I’m pregnant, and she’s taking off on retrievals without me?”

Pete, Claudia and Steve all exchanged looks. 

“Uh… Mykes, what are you talking about?” Claudia asked gently. 

“I am talking about my wife, Helena Wells. What are you guys talking about?” Myka asked, thoroughly confused. 

“They’re also talking about Helena Wells, who is most certainly not your wife, Myka,” Artie’s voice came from behind her, and it was gentle. 

“What do you mean, Artie?” Myka said, turning in her chair to look at him. “Helena and I got married a year ago. You were there with Vanessa, and Pete was my best man, and Claudia stood up for Helena since she hasn’t got anyone. What’s going on, guys?”

“I don’t know what’s going on, Myka, but it is definitely something strange. Can you all please make your way to the Warehouse? Dr Calder will meet you there,” Mrs Frederic said, from a previously unoccupied part of the room. 

Myka turned to the Caretaker, nodding. Something really strange was happening, and she was going to get to the bottom of it and get Helena back from Wisconsin as soon as possible. Things didn’t feel right without her here. How could she have left when they had a baby on the way? Something seriously hinky was going on. 

They all made their way to the Warehouse, Artie with Claudia and Steve and Myka with Pete. When they entered, Dr Calder was waiting. 

“Myka, could you come with me, please?” she asked, and Myka nodded, following the physician to her small office. She sat in the chair next to the small desk, and Dr Calder sat in the desk chair, swivelling to look at her searchingly. 

“Myka, what’s the last thing you remember?” Dr Calder asked. 

“I was in the Warehouse, and I was kissing Helena. We were about to go back to the B&B – we’d been here late researching. We were kissing and I felt faint, and then… nothing. I woke up in bed at the B&B, but my room is all wrong, and everyone keeps saying that Helena is in Wisconsin and we’re not married. I don’t understand what’s going on, and I’m trying not to get too stressed because of the baby, Dr Calder, but it’s really hard to stay calm when my wife isn’t even here and everyone is acting so strange…” she said, trailing off and putting her head in her hands. 

“Okay, Myka. Honestly, I have no idea what’s going on here, but I want to do some tests just to check on your health, okay?” Dr Calder said, her voice low and soothing. Myka nodded without looking up. 

Dr Calder did the usual tests – heart rate, blood pressure, blood tests, urine. 

“Well, by all accounts, Myka, you’re in perfect health. Did you say you’re pregnant?” Dr Calder asked gently. 

“Yes. About nine weeks,” Myka said, her hand going to her abdomen automatically. Dr Calder asked her to strip and change into the robe behind the small screen so that she could do a sonogram. Myka changed, cursing the need for it when all she had to do was pull up her shirt. But doctors will be doctors, she thought. 

The baby’s heartbeat was loud and steady, and Myka smiled to hear it. 

“You really are pregnant,” Dr Calder murmured. “Who is the father?” she asked. 

“An anonymous donor. Helena and I chose from a sperm bank,” Myka said. Dr Calder looked at her carefully for a long moment. 

“Okay, Myka. You can get dressed now. I’m going to speak to Mrs Frederic. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Myka nodded and wiped the goo off her belly with some disposable tissue paper. She knew from the last sonogram that she would find more of that goo everywhere later. She changed behind the screen and when she returned, Dr Calder was there along with Mrs Frederic and Pete. 

“Myka, I’ve asked Agent Lattimer to join us, since he seems the most likely… candidate,” Mrs Frederic began. 

“Candidate for what?” Myka asked, confused. 

“For… well, you’re pregnant, Myka,” Dr Calder said patiently. 

“Yes, I know. I told you that, Dr Calder,” Myka said. 

“But Myka, you and Helena are not in a relationship. Never mind married, which means that this pregnancy must have happened differently to how you’ve described,” Dr Calder said, tilting her head sympathetically. 

It was Pete, oddly, who caught on first. 

“Whoa, Doc – you have the wrong end of the stick here. I don’t know how Myka ended up pregnant, but I can tell you straight that nothing – nothing like that has ever – will ever happen between us. Myka’s like my sister, man,” he said, looking visibly distressed at the idea. 

“Oh my God!” Myka said, realising what Dr Calder was insinuating. “You think I slept with Pete?!”

She sputtered, completely speechless at the idea. 

“Doc, you couldn’t be more wrong, seriously,” Pete said firmly, and Dr Calder sighed. 

“Fine. I believe you. But we have a bit of a mystery, now. So far as any of us knew, Myka was not pregnant before she fainted last night. And her memories of her situation certainly don’t match up with recent history,” Dr Calder said. “I think it’s time we had a proper talk with everyone.”

The “proper talk” consisted of Myka relating the details of her relationship with Helena (within the bounds of decency, of course) and the recent past – specifically, since Helena had arrived in their lives – to everyone, bar Leena, who did not appear to be around. 

During the course of their chat, Abigail Cho emerged from the umbilicus. 

“Excuse me, but why are you here, Abigail?” Myka asked, confused. 

“I came to do some inventory.” said the woman, looking at her in complete confusion. “Did someone get whammied?”

“Myka did, we think,” Claudia chimed in, looking at Abigail adoringly. 

“Okay,” Myka said. “But why are you here?” She looked at Abigail suspiciously and Abigail seemed to realise, suddenly, why she was asking.

“Myka, I’m not here because of you. I took over the B&B when Leena died, and I was here for Artie afterwards. I came over today to see if I could help with inventory. I’m not here to psychoanalyse you, okay? I promise.”

Myka looked at Steve involuntarily, and he nodded solemnly. Good. At least the woman was telling the truth. But…

“Leena’s dead?” she whispered, tears filling her eyes immediately. 

“Yes, Myka. I’m sorry,” Dr Calder said softly. “It was to do with the incident where the Warehouse was nearly blown up by Walter Sykes. Do you remember that?”

“No,” Myka said, with an impatient sigh. “Because it didn’t happen. Walter Sykes? He was a low-league artefact thief who Helena and I caught a few years back. He was obsessed with the Collodi bracelet; Jane Lattimer took it from him as a kid. He’s in jail.”

“I think we’re looking at something other than simple memory loss here,” Artie said, his voice concerned. “I don’t think this is the Myka we know.”

“Parallel universe?” Claudia asked. 

“I’m afraid so,” Artie said, sighing heavily. “Which makes this all much more complicated.”

Myka stared at him for a long moment. 

“So where is this world’s Helena?” she asked. 

“Why don’t you take Myka back to the B&B and explain that to her, Pete,” Dr Calder said carefully, “while we do some research into what might have caused this. We’ll need you to come back to the Warehouse after that – we need to talk about our Myka and her state of mind before this happened, okay?”

“Sure, Doc,” Pete said easily, and he smiled at Myka. “You coming, partner?”

She smiled back. Pete was her salvation in all of this; he, at least, hadn’t changed beyond all recognition like the rest of the world. 

They drove back in easy silence and Pete went to make her some chamomile tea before sitting her down. 

“Myka, Helena in this world – it sounds like she’s a bit different from your… wife,” he began. 

“How so?” she asked. She began to wish she hadn’t asked, after hearing about Helena trying to destroy the world. But she was heartened by the fact that Helena hadn’t gone through with her plans, and that it was because she couldn’t kill this world’s Myka. That was a good sign, right? And she’d sacrificed herself in an alternate timeline to save the Warehouse – to save Myka. 

Then Pete told her about Boone, about Nate, about Adelaide, and Myka’s blood boiled. 

“She’s doing what?” she asked dangerously. “Shacking up with some accountant and his daughter? What on earth is she thinking? And why didn’t I – your Myka, I mean – why didn’t she drag her home?”

He gave her a sympathetic look. 

“Myka told her to stay, to make the place her home. I didn’t really get it, but now, with you, I do. She’s in love with Helena and she wants her to be happy, so she told her to stay there with the dude and be happy. It explains why she was hiding away in her room since we got back from Wisconsin. I don’t know why she went to the Warehouse so late at night though,” Pete said, looking upset with himself for not realising sooner. 

“She was probably doing inventory,” Myka said automatically. “I do it sometimes when I need to calm myself down. If she’s anything like me, that’s probably why she was there.”

“Yeah. She was outside the HG Wells section, too. That explains a lot,” Pete said thoughtfully. 

“Hmm. That makes sense, I guess,” she said, tapping her lip thoughtfully. 

“Listen, Mykes, are you gonna be okay here? I should get back to the Warehouse, see what they need to know about our Myka. You know where your room is, right? And the library is right down the hall. We’ll be back in a few hours, I guess,” he said vaguely. 

“Sure,” she said, her mind racing. She would be damned if she was going to let Helena stay living with some random guy in Wisconsin. She and Helena were meant to be together, and even if this was a parallel universe, she wasn’t going to let it stand. 

Pete went back to the Warehouse and Myka went to look at the driveway. Thankfully, the Myka in this universe had the same car that she and Helena shared. She went up to her room and used some codes Claudia had given her to hack into the Warehouse’s mainframe, finding Helena’s – Emily’s – new address. She picked up her counterpart’s wallet, keys, Farnsworth, Tesla and cell along with a jacket and some CDs – it was a long drive – and started the long drive. She had to stop once on the way for gas and snacks, but even so, she was in Boone, Wisconsin in less than nine hours. She had fielded two calls from Artie on the Farnsworth, and she had told him firmly both times that she had a personal matter to take care of, and she’d be back when she was ready. Even so, she wasn’t expecting Pete, Steve and Claudia to be waiting for her when she pulled into the cul-de-sac where Helena’s new home was located. 

“What are you guys doing here?” she asked, surreptitiously taking her Tesla out of the car as she stepped out. She didn’t want to shock them, but if they tried to stop her…

“Artie sent us to take you back. But we figured you might need a bit of moral support anyway, so we thought we’d come along,” Claudia said with a smile. 

“Yeah. So we told him we’d grab you and drag you home,” Pete said, “but we also booked a couple of hotel rooms, just in case. Do you want to go in on your own, or should we come with you?”

She stared at them for a moment. 

“You guys came here to help?” she asked. 

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we?” Pete asked. “You’re Myka. Well, you’re not ‘our’ Myka, exactly, but definitely ‘a’ Myka, and if you can convince Helena to come home, you’ll make our Myka happy. And personally I like it when she’s happy, so…”

She smiled at him, putting her Tesla in her pocket, and went over and gave him a quick hug. 

“Thanks, you guys,” she said, looking around at them all. “This means a lot.”

“Anytime, Myka,” Steve said sincerely. 

They made their way to the door, the others standing back. Myka knocked, and the door was answered by a tall man who might have been described as handsome by some. She could only think, “He’s touched my Helena,” and therefore had to resist the urge to throttle him. 

“Hi,” she said. “Is Helena home?”

“Agent Bering?” he asked, confused. “Why are you here? Has something else happened? One of your… curiosities?”

“No,” she said, shortly. “Is she here?”

“Ah… yes, she’s home. Come in, please,” he said, looking uncertainly at Pete and the others. 

“Helena!” Myka yelled, stomping into the house, looking for the woman who was, in her universe, her wife. She was mad as hell and while she wouldn’t normally make a scene, she was pregnant and hungry and in a parallel universe. Helena was about to bear the brunt of all of those things. 

“Myka?” Helena asked, confused, as she came rushing down from upstairs. “Is there something wrong? Did you find another curiosity?”

“No, I didn’t find a curiosity. Not unless you consider you being here a curiosity,” Myka spat. “What the hell are you doing, Helena? What on earth happened to you to make you think that this,” she gestured around the house contemptuously, “was your only option?”

“What on earth are you talking about, Myka?” Helena asked, her eyes beginning to narrow. “We discussed this already. You told me to make this my home.”

“I don’t care what I said,” Myka ranted, pulling her hand through her curls angrily. “This is not you. I don’t know what happened to you, but this is wrong.”

Helena stared from her to Pete and Claudia, followed by Steve. 

“Hello, everyone. Could someone please explain to me what’s going on?”

“Okay,” Pete said, “but I think you’re going to want some tea for this conversation, if previous experience is anything to go by. And Myka, you don’t need to be running around in your condition. Will you sit down?” he said, leading her into the kitchen and onto a bar stool carefully. 

“Fine,” she said, her head drooping a little. She was really tired after the drive. 

“Nate, maybe you could go and check on Adelaide, or whatever?” Pete said to the wide-eyed man in the doorway. 

“Is this more of this stuff I don’t want to know about?” Nate asked uncertainly. 

“Definitely, man,” Pete said, nodding emphatically. Nate looked around the room and then backed out, heading upstairs presumably to help Adelaide with her homework or Barbie dolls or whatever other adorable thing she was doing at that particular moment. Myka felt momentarily ashamed at thinking like that – it wasn’t the kid’s fault – but it soon faded in the face of her white-hot rage at Helena for running away, for doing this to her. Well, not her, but her counterpart. 

Steve sat on one of the bar stools and Claudia sat next to Myka, taking one of her hands and squeezing it gently. 

“You okay, Myka?” she said quietly. 

“Yeah. Just a little tired,” Myka said. 

“Helena, could you maybe grab something for Myka to eat? A protein bar or something?”

“Of course,” Helena said, taking out some cups from the cupboard. “Why?”

“She drove the whole way here, and she’s a little tired.”

Helena nodded, but her eyes lingered on the rapidly wilting Myka. 

She made tea for all of them, sitting at the bar area with them before asking, once again, what was happening. 

“Well, this might be a little hard to believe, but this isn’t Myka,” Claudia began. 

“Of course it is,” Helena said. 

“Well, she is ‘a’ Myka, but she’s not our Myka,” Claudia said. Myka took the protein bar that Helena offered and tore into it, her blood sugar rapidly dipping after her long drive. 

“And what’s wrong with her?” Helena asked, staring as Myka demolished the protein bar. 

“I’m pregnant,” Myka said, through a mouthful of peanut and chocolate. 

“What?” Helena asked, her face paling. 

“Pregnant. Are you deaf, as well as insane?” Myka spat. 

“I’m certainly not deaf, I can assure you,” Helena said, looking extremely offended. “Can I ask where you’ve come from, then, if you’re not ‘our’ Myka, as Claudia puts it?”

“I came from my world, where things make sense,” Myka said, glaring at Helena. 

“A parallel universe?” Helena asked. 

“That’s what we’re guessing,” Claudia said, taking a sip of tea and grimacing. “What the hell is this, HG?”

“Pomegranate and strawberry,” Helena said, looking offended again. “It’s Adelaide’s favourite.”

“Well, that’s just great. Where is the little darling?” Myka said, practically snarling. 

“She’s upstairs, but I suspect her meeting you in this condition is a rather bad idea, Myka, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Fine,” Myka growled. She took a sip of the tea and winced. It tasted like boiled twigs. 

“So, I understand that this isn’t the Myka we know, but what does that have to do with me? I thought I’d made it clear that I wanted nothing to do with the Warehouse, Pete,” Helena said, turning to him in confusion. Myka gritted her teeth. 

“It wasn’t my idea, Helena. Myka wanted to talk to you, and she made her way here alone. We took a flight when she realised where she’d gone so we could take her home. I figured it was probably best if you two spoke first. She’s pretty mad at you.”

“What could I possibly have done to annoy someone I’ve never even met?” Helena asked, looking from Myka to Pete and back again. 

“What could you have done? Seriously?” Myka began. 

Claudia stood up slowly. 

“You know, guys, maybe we should go and chat with Adelaide and what’s-his-face, let these two talk?” Claudia said, already inching towards the door. Steve shrugged and followed her, and Pete went to follow. 

“Don’t do anything permanent to her, Myka. And remember, you’re pregnant. Don’t get too worked up, it’s bad for the baby.”

Myka turned her glare on him and he backed out of the room, hands up in supplication. 

“Well, Myka. What have I done to offend you from another universe, exactly?” Helena asked, sitting down next to her. 

“What have you done? What are you doing, Helena? Why are you here, in this place, with this guy and his kid? Why aren’t you at home with Myka where you belong?”

“Where I belong? What is that supposed to mean, exactly?” Helena asked, looking more curious than offended. 

“You’re my wife, Helena. This baby, it’s our baby. So when I ask why you’re not with Myka, that’s what I mean. Why on earth are you here pretending to be a soccer mom when you could be with Myka? And don’t tell me you don’t love her, because I know that’s a lie.”

“I don’t love her,” Helena began, her expression closed. Myka simply stood up, hauling Helena to her feet along with her, and stood close to her, tilting her head down so that their lips were almost touching. Helena’s breath caught, and her pupils dilated. 

“Tell me again that you don’t love me,” Myka said huskily, her lips moving almost against Helena’s. “Tell me you don’t want me.”

Helena closed her eyes, swaying slightly, her hands in fists at her sides. 

“You can’t, can you?” Myka murmured, moving her head so that her mouth was next to Helena’s ear. “You can’t tell me that you don’t want me, that you don’t love me, because that would be a lie. Do you want me to get Steve in here to confirm that? Because I can.”

Helena shook her head slightly, her eyes still tightly closed. 

“I guess if you don’t love me, you won’t want me to do this,” Myka said quietly, taking Helena’s earlobe into her mouth, and sucking on it gently. Helena’s breath caught again, and she gasped. 

“And if you don’t want that, you definitely don’t want me to do this,” Myka said, kissing the side of Helena’s neck and moving her lips slowly down her jaw. She slid one hand up into Helena’s hair, tugging at the roots gently in the way she knew Helena loved. 

“Please, Myka,” Helena whispered, trembling.

“Please, what?” Myka asked, running her tongue along Helena’s jaw. “Please stop, or please continue?”

“Please…” was all Helena could manage, so Myka took that as encouragement and she pulled Helena closer, their bodies touching from breast to hip. 

“She loves you just as much as I do, Helena. I don’t know what you’re doing out here, but I know it’s a lie,” she continued, as she brushed her lips against Helena’s gently, just once, before moving to the other side of Helena’s face, kissing her jaw. Helena whimpered. Myka took both of her hands, still in loose fists at her side, and pulled them around her own waist. 

“She loves you, and you love her. And you can’t tell me you don’t want this, because your body is giving you away right now, Helena,” Myka continued. She moved her mouth to Helena’s other ear, grasping the earlobe between her tongue and teeth, and sucking on it gently as she had the other. 

Helena’s arms tightened around her and she moaned quietly, dropping her head to Myka’s shoulder. 

“So if you want her, and you love her, the question remains,” Myka said, kissing the side of Helena’s neck. “What are you doing here, in the middle of nowhere? I had a long drive here, Helena,” she said, pushing Helena’s shirt slightly off her shoulder and kissing the newly bared skin. “It gave me time to think about why you would be hiding away from the Warehouse and away from me.”

She kissed Helena’s collarbone, and Helena gasped slightly again against her shoulder. Myka ran her hand up into Helena’s hair again before continuing her speech. 

“I figured it’s probably a mixture of guilt, for this whole Trident thing that Pete told me about,” she said, biting down on Helena’s collarbone. Helena grunted.

“And perhaps the fact that this guy has a daughter around Christina’s age,” she said, and this time she nipped at Helena’s neck sharply. 

“Myka,” Helena began, but Myka began to suck at the juncture of Helena’s jaw and neck, and her words trailed off into a moan. 

“So,” Myka said conversationally, straightening up to speak directly into Helena’s ear again, “I figure it’s guilt, and the attraction of having a kid again. You know that there’s no reason why you and Myka can’t have kids together. Because that’s exactly what’s happening, where I live, Helena. In my world, you and I are married. Lovers. Having a baby. You can’t tell me that you don’t want that, Helena.”

Helena just whimpered in response. Myka pulled at her hair again, small tugs that made Helena whimper a little each time. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Myka said, softly, as she turned Helena’s head gently towards her. “You just have to say, and I will.”

Helena looked at her helplessly, lips parted and chest heaving. Myka leaned closer to her lips, looking at her incredible eyes, feeling all of the fire and attraction that she always felt when she was this close to Helena. Granted, this wasn’t her Helena, but it wasn’t right that they were apart, especially if it was just because of some misplaced feeling of guilt. 

“Please,” Helena said, and this time her meaning was clear. Myka leaned forward a few millimetres and touched her lips to Helena’s. It took a moment for Helena to respond, but when she did it was all fire and passion, and this time it was Myka’s turn to whimper. After a long, delving kiss, Helena broke away, resting her head once again on Myka’s shoulder. 

“Why are you doing this, Myka? You’re not a cheater; I know you,” she whispered.

“Ah, but you’re forgetting, Helena. From my perspective, you’re the cheater. You’re my wife. We’re having a baby together. This – whatever this is that you’re doing here; this is the lie. This is the cheat. And don’t tell me you love him, because we both know that’s not true.”

Helena sighed, her hands tightening around Myka’s waist again. 

“I don’t love him. But maybe I could,” she muttered, half to herself. 

“You love me – her. You love your Myka. Why are you here, Helena? What drove you away from the only place you’ve ever called home?” Myka asked, exasperated. 

“I ran away. You don’t know what happened, Myka. You don’t know what I did, and what they did to me in return.”

“I don’t, you’re right. But tell me this – did Myka do those things to you?”

“No,” Helena admitted. 

“So why are you punishing her? And punishing yourself?”

“I… I don’t know. I thought it was best. She deserves better than me.”

Myka sighed heavily. 

“No, Helena. She loves you, and she deserves you. Something tells me that her pain at losing you is at the root of all of this – it’s the reason I’m here. So come home with me now, please. Bring her home, and help me get home to my wife. Please,” she said, her voice pleading. 

Helena lifted her head, and after a long pause, she nodded. 

“I’m not staying, Myka. I’ll help you get her back. But I’m not staying.”

“That’s up to you and your Myka, Helena. But I wouldn’t bank on it if I were you,” Myka said smugly. Helena stared at her. 

“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she said, her voice edged with irritation. 

“I’m not at all sure of myself, Helena. But I am sure of one thing, and that’s how we feel about each other. Apparently it’s just as strong, no matter what universe we’re in,” she said, leaning down and kissing Helena again fervently. She noted with some satisfaction that Helena couldn’t help but kiss back. Whatever she said, her actions said otherwise. 

Myka moved away gently, turning to head into the other room. 

“You comin’?” she asked, over her shoulder. She heard Helena swear under her breath before following her.


	2. Chapter 2

Myka sat on the couch in the library, looking at the familiar text of her copy of “The Invisible Man,” signed by the author. It appeared that even in this world, Helena had signed the book for her. Whether it was before or after they became an item, Myka wasn’t sure.

Helena entered the room with a tray containing a teapot and cups, along with sugar cubes and milk in delicate tiny pots. You could take the woman out of Victorian England, but apparently the tea ceremony was the tea ceremony, no matter what century you were in.

“How do you take your tea, darling?” Helena asked, as she poured the amber liquid into a cup.

“I assume I take it the same way as your Myka does,” Myka said with a smirk.

“Well, I would normally have assumed that, but lately my wife has taken to adding sugar to everything, so…” Helena smiled, and Myka smiled back crookedly.

“Just a dash of milk, please,” Myka said.

They sat in silence for a short time. Myka drank her tea and flipped through her book idly, seeing that it was just as well-worn as her copy at home.

“She loves that book. It’s the first thing I ever gave her,” Helena murmured.

“I love it too,” Myka said.

“This is so strange. You have her face. All I want to do is kiss you, and hold you. But you’re not her.”

Myka looked at her for a long moment. This was so hard. Myka wanted nothing but to be kissed by Helena, but this was not her Helena. It was hard to remember that. It was hard to even want to remember that, when Helena was looking at her this way.

“I… I gathered, the kissing part, after earlier,” Myka said, smiling, but with a slight flush to her cheeks.  
“I am sorry about that,” Helena said, her cheeks a little red too. “In my defence, I thought you were my wife.”

“No need to apologise, Helena,” Myka said. “This situation – none of us could have predicted it.” She took a sip of her tea, trying to calm her racing thoughts. 

“So how… how did you two get together? You and your Myka?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know how things happened in your world. You know that I was released from the Bronze Sector by James MacPherson?”

Myka nodded.

“Well, at the first opportunity I had, I knocked him out and turned him over to the Warehouse, along with myself, and threw myself on the mercy of the Regents. They were inclined to be merciful, given that I’d asked to be released in 1966 and somehow my records had gone missing. It seemed like a nice round number, 100 years after my birth, to start a new life. The Regents let me go, and against all odds, decided I would be a good addition to the Warehouse. Artie assigned me as your partner, since you were the most sensible of his agents, he said. We were investigating the spontaneous combustion of some young men at a university in Tamalpais, and someone drove a car at us. I used my grappler to get us out of the way, and you turned to me while we were 30 feet above the street, and you kissed me. It was… unexpected. I hadn’t imagined that you would return my affections, given that you’d only just broken up with your man friend, Sam. But you did, and after that things… snowballed, I suppose. We were in close quarters at all times, and we were dealing with life-or-death every day. It was a natural progression. Your friend Pete insisted that we were typical lesbians, whatever that means. Given that neither of us are, in fact, lesbians. But in any case, things progressed and we were married a year ago. You asked me if I wanted any more children, after losing Christina, and I thought for a long time, but eventually decided that children with you – well, it was something I couldn’t have even conceived of, when I was growing up. To raise a child with a woman?”

She looked at Myka, and her eyes were so full of love and fondness that Myka’s eyes filled. How she wished that this woman could be her Helena! It was heart-breaking, and after a moment, she couldn’t hold back the pain. She began to sob, making pained noises that she’d never heard from herself before, not even when her Sam died.

“Hey, hey,” Helena said, taking Myka’s hand and pulling her into her arms, “it’s okay, Myka. It will all be okay in the end.”

She whispered soothing nonsense into Myka’s hair, rocking her slightly as she cried her heart out. When Myka finally stopped crying, she became uncomfortably aware of Helena’s arms around her, of Helena’s lips against her hair, of the warmth of Helena’s body against hers. She wanted nothing more than to stay there, cocooned from the world by the body next to her. But this wasn’t her Helena, and even if it were, she wouldn’t be holding Myka. She would be pushing her away so that she could be with her boring, white-bread boyfriend and his annoyingly clever daughter.

Myka sat up suddenly, wiping her face with a handkerchief that Helena produced with a flourish that was probably unconscious. Could she actually do anything without being ridiculously charming and sexy? Probably not, Myka reasoned.

“Are you okay, darling?” Helena asked, her face creased in concern. She obviously wanted to touch Myka, and was just as frustrated by the situation as Myka herself was.

“I’m fine,” Myka mumbled, staring at her own fingernails. “I… thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Myka,” Helena said, her voice low. Myka did not look up. She didn’t trust herself to.

“So, what happened to your Helena?” Helena asked, after a long silence.

“What do you mean?” Myka asked.

“Well, you aren’t together, apparently, and there was some talk of destroying the world. So, how did that happen?” Helena asked.

“Well, when Christina was murdered, she went off the rails a little,” Myka began, but Helena gasped.

“She was murdered?” Helena asked, her hand going to her mouth in shock.

“Yes. It was a robbery gone wrong,” Myka said. “She was murdered while Helena was away on a retrieval, and she never forgave herself. She built her time machine to try to change things, but, as she said, the ink with which our lives are inscribed is indelible. She couldn’t change what happened, but she did witness it through the eyes of her maid, Sophie. Did any of this happen to you?” Myka asked, breaking off her story curiously.

“Well, I did build a time machine, but it was in an attempt to stop my past self from taking Christina to India where I believed she had contracted cholera. I know now that she was just as likely to have caught it in London, but medical science being what it was back then… I had no real chance of saving her, even if I had stopped myself from going to India. Which I couldn’t, by the way. I could change nothing,” she said, her face sad but not angry, not like HG’s when she talked about Christina’s death.

“Well, she witnessed Christina’s murder and I think – I think it sent her a little bit crazy. She found the guys who killed her, and she tortured them. I don’t know if the guys died or not, but the Regents found out. They let her off with it at first, I think, but then she did something else – I’m not sure what – and killed one of her colleagues at the Warehouse. It was an accident, but it was because she was trying to do some sort of experiment to bring Christina back. So, the Regents brought her in and she asked to be Bronzed. She said she wanted to wake up in a better time,” Myka said.

“That’s… well, that’s a little disturbing. She is me, but with all of this… I wonder if I would have become that same way, had my Christina been murdered instead of dying from disease?” Helena wondered out loud.

Myka shrugged. She thought the answer was pretty clear; since they were both the same person, it meant that they would respond the same way in the same circumstances. But who knew what slight differences there were between this Helena and hers that might have changed their reactions?

“When she came out of the Bronze sector,” Myka continued, “she was planning to end the world with the Minoan Trident. We didn’t know that, of course. She spent a lot of time winning my trust and I recommended her for reinstatement. A short while later, we went to Egypt after we got a ping about some graduate students dying in weird circumstances. It turned out that she’d sent them there, on the hunt for Warehouse 2, where the Trident was stored. Well, half of it. The other half was on Christina’s coffin – she’d found it before she was Bronzed.”

Helena sucked in a sharp breath.

“She must have been insane… to desecrate her – our - daughter’s grave that way. I can’t even imagine,” she said, shaking her head. Myka reached over to squeeze her knee for a second, without thinking. She let go quickly, however, and flushed before continuing.

“Ah… yes, well. She brought the Trident to Yellowstone Caldera, to try to start a new Ice Age, but not before she sent an artefact to Kelly which made her attack Pete. It was to distract us, but Kelly broke up with Pete as a result.”

“God. They didn’t marry, then?” Helena asked, looking appalled.

Myka shook her head.

“No. She moved away. Anyway, Helena almost did it – she almost started a new Ice Age. But I put a gun in her hand and told her she had to kill me first. If she was going to kill everyone, it didn’t matter, right?   
But she looked at me, and I could see the pain in her eyes… she couldn’t do it, and that’s when the Regents took her away. They used the Janus coin – do you know what that is?”

Helena shook her head.

“It splits your soul from your body, or your personality, I guess. They gave the body new memories and Helena was inside the coin, somehow. There was a projector thing that the Regents worked out, and she was able to talk to us through that whenever they allowed it. I didn’t want to talk to her at first – I left the Warehouse after what happened at Yellowstone,” Myka said, pouring another cup from the teapot.

“Why did you leave?” Helena asked curiously.

“I thought it was my fault. I let my feelings… my feelings for her cloud my judgement, and the whole world was nearly destroyed because I trusted her. I didn’t trust myself, after that. And honestly, I was heartbroken. I trusted her, I… and she was using me the whole time.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes,” Myka said, looking away.

“Anyway, she helped out with a couple of cases, and then something happened – a man called Walter Sykes was targeting the Warehouse, killing Regents. I won’t go into all the details but it turned out that he was looking for Helena so she could help him get into the Warehouse, past a defence that Caturanga put together – a chess puzzle.”

“He was a master of the game. I think I miss him more than anyone, save Christina.” Helena said, smiling fondly.

“Sykes kidnapped Helena’s body – she was called Emily Lake, this fake personality, and he managed to get hold of the Janus coin. He put her back together again and used her – and me – to get through the chess lock.”

“How?” Helena asked.

“He put me in danger. She saved me, solved the puzzle. And then he blew up the Warehouse with us all in it. Helena managed to protect us – she did something with the force field thingie – you know the barrier that comes up when the Warehouse is in danger?”

“Yes,” Helena murmured. “The Ramati shackle raises a barrier to protect the Warehouse from threats.”

“Yeah. So, the barrier was up, and Sykes had planted a bomb using some of the masonry from the House of Commons…”

“The masonry from the Blitz?” Helena interrupted, looking horrified.

“Yes. I’m told, although I don’t remember any of it, that Helena used the barrier to somehow cover me, Pete and Artie with a force field so we were outside of the blast.”

“Yes, I was aware it could be manipulated in that way,” Helena said thoughtfully. “But she would have been…”

“Yeah. She died,” Myka said, shrugging slightly.

“That was incredibly brave,” Helena said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah. I think… I think maybe she was trying to redeem herself. She died, and that allowed Artie to use a pocketwatch to find another artefact – Magellan’s astrolabe – with which he turned back time 24 hours.   
He saved the Warehouse, and he saved Helena’s life.”

Helena sat back, running her fingers through her hair.

“Well. That’s quite a story. So how is it, then, that you’re not together? Because if I know myself, and I do, the sacrifice I made to save the Warehouse – it was to save you. Didn’t you approach her afterwards?” Helena asked, looking at Myka curiously, and in an almost accusatory fashion.

“Well, I would have, but the Regents took her away. I didn’t see her again until two days ago.”

“And you didn’t try to find her?” Helena asked.

“I asked. Mrs Frederic, even Mr Kosan. They said she was safe and not imprisoned, and that was all they would tell me. I didn’t know what else to do,” Myka said, protesting slightly.

“And does Claudia not have hacking skills in your universe? Would she not have helped?” Helena asked, her eyes sharp.

“If I’d asked, yes. I… I didn’t want to explain,” Myka said, hanging her head a little.

“So, it’s not just her fault, then?” Helena asked.

“No. It’s mine too. I know that. But I’m not the one who ran off to suburbia and shacked up with some guy she met at a cooking class!” Myka snapped.

Helena reached over and took her hand, stroking the back of Myka’s knuckles with her thumb.

“I’m sorry, Myka. I know that you have tried. I’m just trying to get you to think of matters from her point of view. She loves you, I’m sure of that. But if she’s been told not to contact you, and you haven’t looked for her, perhaps she believes that her feelings are not reciprocated,” she murmured, looking up at Myka through lowered eyelashes. She was – as ever – breathtakingly beautiful, and Myka found herself unable to look away.

“I… I guess that’s possible. But I saw her, Helena. She looked at me like… she looked at me like she was sorry for me. Like she knew she’d broken my heart, and she did it anyway. I don’t see how I can come back from that,” Myka said, her bottom lip trembling as she tried to hold back tears again. She couldn’t very well cry in this woman’s arms twice in the same day. It was very difficult to remind herself that this wasn’t her Helena.

“Love is a funny thing, Myka. It can heal all sorts of things,” Helena murmured, still gazing at her from under lowered lashes.

Myka closed her eyes, taking in a shaky breath. She pulled her hand away from Helena slowly.

“I’m sorry, Myka,” Helena said, sounding chastened. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Myka said, quietly. “I just – if you keep touching me, I don’t know… I miss her. I haven’t seen her for such a long time, and you are her. And you’re so nice. It’s… difficult.”

“Yes,” Helena murmured. “I miss my Myka, too. She’s pregnant and God knows where she is. I am so frightened, Myka.”

Myka opened her eyes, looking at Helena sympathetically.

“I’m sorry, Helena,” she said. “I wish there was something I could do.”

Helena’s eyes were filling.

“Could you – I know what you said, but – I need her, Myka. She keeps me grounded, keeps me sane. Could you just hold me for a moment, please?”

Her eyes were pleading, and Myka couldn’t say no. She had never been able to say no to Helena Wells; that was part of the problem.

“Come here,” she said, lifting her arm in invitation. Helena snuggled herself under, and Myka wrapped one arm securely around her slim body, and then the other when she realised that Helena was trembling.

“We’ll fix this, Helena. It will be okay,” Myka said, wondering how the tables had turned so quickly between them. She felt Helena take deep breaths, trying to control her emotions. Myka pulled her closer and buried her nose in Helena’s hair. She smelled wonderful, and Myka tried not to enjoy the contact, because she was supposed to be comforting Helena, but it had been a long time since Myka had enjoyed any intimate contact, and this Helena had kissed her just a few hours earlier. It was hard not to remember that. She took deep breaths to keep herself calm, but after a moment, Helena lifted her head to look at her, her lips parted slightly and her pupils dilated.

“Myka, I know… I know you’re not her. I just… please…”

She leaned forward, and Myka didn’t pull away. She knew this wasn’t her Helena, and she wasn’t the Myka that this woman wanted, but right then she was the closest thing to it. She, too, leaned forward, and they took comfort in each other, comfort that quickly turned into heat and then an incredible inferno of need. Helena was kissing her with certainty, the kind of kiss that people shared when they knew each other well; when they knew how the other person liked to be kissed. It was intimate and hot and sexy and Myka just wanted to let Helena devour her right there and then. After a long moment, however, Helena pulled away.

“I’m sorry, Myka,” she said, her eyes downcast. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Don’t apologise, Helena,” Myka said, shaking her head. “It’s not easy, seeing someone else wearing the face of the person you love. Neither of us can be blamed for reacting this way. I love you, or rather I love the other you. When you look at me… I can see how you feel about her, and it’s hard not to respond to that.”

Helena nodded, still not looking up.

“I hope they’re able to find a solution to this soon,” she muttered, running her fingers through her hair distractedly.

“Me too. But I don’t regret meeting you, Helena. It’s sad in a way, but it’s also nice to know what could have been.” Myka didn’t look up as she said that; she didn’t want to see pity in Helena’s eyes again.

They ate a quiet dinner with the others and Myka was finally hoping that she might, at the very least, get some rest and privacy when Leena came to speak to her.

“Myka, I’m sorry but I’ve only just realised that you and Helena…” she trailed off, not meeting Myka’s eyes.

“What’s wrong, Leena?” Myka asked, knowing that she was pretty sure, from Leena’s expression, that she wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I don’t have anywhere else to put you, Myka. Abigail is going to be back soon, and Steve is on his way home from the airport. There’s only your room, and I guess I didn’t really think it through, with everything, but obviously our Myka shares it with Helena…” she said, trailing off again, looking utterly dejected.

“It’s fine, Leena,” Myka said, trying to keep her face from falling. “I can sleep anywhere. There’s a couch in the library, that will do just fine.”

“Nonsense,” Helena said, from behind her. “You will not be sleeping on any couch if I can help it. You can sleep in our bed; I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Myka turned to face her.

“No, Helena. I can’t let you give up your bed. I can sleep down here perfectly comfortably, and it’s not fair of me to throw you out of your own room,” Myka protested.

“No, Myka. You can’t sleep on a sofa; you’re pregnant. I won’t have it,” Helena said, before dropping her face into her hands. “Except you’re not pregnant, are you?” she muttered.

“I’m sorry, Helena,” Myka said, putting her hand on the other woman’s forearm and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I promise you, I want to fix this and get back home just as much as you want your Myka back.”

“That is what we all want,” Mrs Frederic’s sonorous voice emanated from right next to them, and they all jumped, except for Leena, who had always seemed to just know when Mrs Frederic was going to appear. “However, in the circumstances I think it best if someone is with Agent Bering at all times. And I think that should be you, Agent Wells, since you know her best. So share the room as best you can, and we will see what can be done in the morning.”

“Fine,” Helena said, snapping slightly, but Mrs F was already gone. Myka just sighed. It couldn’t have just been a quiet night – of course not. Now she had to sleep in the same bed as Helena – not only that, but it was a Helena who was used to sleeping with her, a Helena who was married to her. Or one of her, at least.

“Come along then,” Helena said, stomping off upstairs like a little girl having a tantrum. Myka took another deep breath.

“This is hard for her, Myka. Don’t take anything she says too seriously,” Leena said, her eyes wide and sincere.

“I know,” Myka said, her eyes lingering on the stairs where Helena had just disappeared. “It’s not a bunch of fun for me either,” she muttered.

“I know,” Leena said, squeezing her shoulder tightly. “Don’t worry. I have a good feeling about this.”

“I’m glad someone does,” Myka said ruefully, smiling at Leena. It really was wonderful to see her again. Losing her – it had been one of the most difficult parts of this last year. Well, that and Helena. Her throat tightened again at the thought of Boone, of Nate touching Helena, putting his arm around her like he owned her.

“Everything will work out, I know it will,” Leena said, taking Myka’s hand and squeezing it. Myka simply nodded, swallowing, and went to follow Helena upstairs. It was going to be a long night.

~

Pete had checked them in with two hotel rooms, not expecting Helena to be joining them. One of the rooms was a simple twin and the other was a suite with two double beds. There was a long moment of mutual awkwardness as they tried to decide who was sleeping where.

“Well, I don’t mind sleeping with Steve, since we’ve done that before, but no offence Myka, I’m not sharing a bed with you or Helena. She has sharp elbows and you snuggle way too much for me to be comfortable with. Also, you’re not even my Myka. So Steve, you, me, double bed?”

Steve nodded, and Pete said, “I guess that leaves you two either sharing the other double bed or the twin room. So what’s it gonna be?”

Myka and Helena shared a long look, and Helena snapped, “The twin will have to do. I’m perfectly happy to go back to Nate’s to sleep, however, and you…”

“What, so you can change your mind and hide when we come to find you in the morning? I don’t think so,” Myka said scornfully. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Helena glared at her, and the others looked at each other and made their excuses, leaving so quickly   
Myka was convinced she could see little clouds of dust at their heels.

“After you,” she said, gesturing for Helena to precede her. They took the elevator to their room in silence, and Myka allowed Helena to change first before using the bathroom herself. She didn’t threaten Helena, but her eyes warned her not to even think about leaving the room. She came back in and settled herself on her bed, finding that Helena had switched on the TV and was watching some reality TV series about models.

“How the mighty have fallen,” she muttered, drawing a dark look from Helena, who retaliated by turning the television up several notches.

Myka read for a while, simply to avoid watching the inane rubbish that Helena was apparently enjoying, and once it was over she turned off her lamp. She said nothing to Helena, who made a loud huffing noise before turning off her own light and turning over to sleep.

Since she’d learned she was pregnant, Myka had been doing her best to drink plenty and stay as fit and healthy as she could while she could still exercise. That fact, along with the pregnancy itself, meant that she was going to the bathroom more and more to pee, even waking up in the middle of the night to go. This night was no different, and she padded to and from the bathroom on autopilot, climbing into bed beside Helena as usual, draping her arms around Helena’s abdomen, and going back to sleep without registering the size of the bed, her whereabouts, or any of the other things that might have told her that getting into this bed was not a good idea.

Another change that the pregnancy had wrought upon her body was that it had increased certain hormones to the point where Myka occasionally had no control over them. She would cry sometimes for no reason, rage at Helena or Artie or Pete for no reason – and jump Helena randomly, even when she had been raging or crying only seconds before. When she woke up – and she wasn’t even half awake – her hormones decided that now was the time to try to rouse Helena’s lust. They had sex in the morning all the time; they were both morning people, so it wasn’t unusual for them to be half awake and fumbling already in the hour or so before dawn. She was doing things to this Helena that she really shouldn’t have been – things that, despite her provocative actions of the night before, she wouldn’t have entertained doing with this version of Helena in a million years. But in her sleep and hormone daze, it was perfectly ok to dip her hands into Helena’s pants, to kiss the back of her neck, to cup her breast. This Helena was no more awake than she was, and was reacting perfectly normally, enjoying the contact, so it didn’t occur to Myka that anything at all was wrong until Helena turned in her arms and put her hands on Myka’s chest – Myka’s breasts – and woke up completely, almost shouting, “What are you DOING?” before scrambling back and, rather predictably, falling out of the tiny bed and landing on her posterior on the floor.

Myka stared around the room in complete and utter confusion. She didn’t know where she was, why she was here, or why her wife was shouting at her. And to top it all off, she was starting to feel…  
She ran to the bathroom and was noisily sick several times, retching noisily for long moments as the vestiges of whatever she’d eaten yesterday re-acquainted themselves with the outside of Myka’s body. She jumped when Helena’s cool hands pulled her hair back, tying it loosely away from her face, and passed her a wet cloth and a glass of water. She took them gratefully, wiping her face and washing out her mouth with the water before taking a long, cool drink.

“Thank you,” she managed, after a short time.

“You’re welcome,” Helena said quietly.

They made their way back into the room, Myka re-situating herself in her own bed this time, where she found a packet of Saltine crackers sitting on her pillow.

“What’s this?” she asked, turning to look at Helena. Helena looked away, going to search through her bags for something.

“I used to eat crackers to combat morning sickness. It was the only thing that worked,” she said shortly.

“Thank you,” Myka said, opening the packet and eating a cracker gingerly. When that didn’t make her throw up, she ate another, and soon the nausea was gone entirely.

“That was like magic,” she said, stunned. How no-one had passed that little gem of information on, she had no idea. How had her Helena never told her about it?

“It works rather well, when it works,” Helena said, sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her fingernails.

“Look, about before,” Myka began, but Helena held up a hand to silence her.

“I don’t want to hear it, Myka. You think that you can seduce me into staying at the Warehouse, but it won’t work. I’m not that easy,” she spat, glaring at Myka.

“That’s not what happened,” Myka said, sighing. “I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I’ve been doing that for weeks, I guess it’s the pregnancy. Anyway I must have climbed into your bed – after all, it’s the closest to the bathroom. I cuddled up with you because I thought you were my Helena, and I tried… well, I was half-asleep this morning, and I thought I was with her. You can think what you like about me, Helena, but I wouldn’t fuck you just so you would stay in South Dakota with Myka. If you don’t love her enough to do that, that’s on you. I was just – I thought I was home, with my wife, and I wanted to make love to her,” she said, beginning to sniffle a little as the reality hit her a little harder. She was in a universe that wasn’t hers, with a Helena who didn’t want her, and Leena was dead. It was some sort of Bizarro world - it was all fucked up, and this Helena – she was pretty horrible, all things considered. She would rather hide away with some boring car salesman and his daughter than stand up and fight for her Myka. It was awful, and as she thought of her counterpart and how she must be feeling, she started crying harder. It must be awful for her in this universe, all alone, with the one person you loved pushing you away. No wonder she’d wished herself into another world.

“Oh God, don’t cry, darling,” Helena said, and the familiarity of that gentle tone in her voice set Myka to crying even harder, horrible sobbing with snot and tears everywhere. Helena came to sit next to her and put her arm around Myka, holding her close and rocking her slightly as she cried herself out. Helena gave her a handkerchief and she wiped her face, trying to make herself look presentable.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice weak and trembling.

“You’re quite welcome, darling,” Helena said, and for a moment she looked caring and sweet and so much like her Helena that Myka just wanted to kiss her, but she knew exactly how well that would be received after the morning they’d had so far. She pulled herself away from Helena’s arms, trying to get her head together and remember where she was.

“I… I think I’m going to go take a shower,” she said, looking away from Helena. 

“Of course,” Helena murmured, and Myka took that as her cue to flee. She wanted to bring Helena back with her, to resolve the situation for this world’s Myka - of course she did, but at this point she just had to get away from her before she did something she would truly regret.

When she finished in the shower she poked her head out only to find that Helena wasn’t there. Whether she’d gone down for breakfast or fled, Myka didn’t know. She dried herself quickly, searching through the suitcase Claudia had brought for her to find some fresh clothes. Luckily, she and her counterpart shared the same taste in clothes so she pulled out some underwear and a bra, putting them on quickly. The bra didn’t fit terribly well; she’d already noticed her boobs getting bigger since she got pregnant. She was just glad she wasn’t further along; it was unlikely that this Myka would have anything suitable for her to wear, otherwise.

She was pulling out some clothes when she heard the door open behind her, and she spun around, holding her shirt up as a rather pathetic shield against the intruder. It was Helena, who was staring at her, her cheeks flushed.

“Oh, it’s you,” Myka said, relieved. She got dressed, apparently nonchalantly, but she could feel Helena’s eyes on her, and she smiled a little to herself. She decided she would write a letter to this world’s Myka to leave behind when they switched back – the woman deserved to know how much she’d done for the cause of getting Helena back where she belonged. Helena disappeared into the bathroom, muttering something about having a shower. She avoided Myka’s eyes, and her face was still flushed.

When Myka was dressed, she went downstairs to eat, meeting a very sleepy Claudia in the restaurant. She was eating bacon with her fingers, a cup of coffee stuck to her other hand, and her eyes were closed.

“Morning, Claud,” Myka said, and Claudia winced.

“Too loud, dude. I have a serious movie hangover. Pete thought it would be a great idea to watch the original Star Wars trilogy last night, and I can still hear the X-wings flying past my ears. How’s HG doing?”  
Myka blinked. In her world, Helena was just Helena. No-one called her HG. But then her Helena hadn’t tried to fork the world into an ice age either. So perhaps the initials were a way of keeping her at a slight remove. A waiter came over and offered her some coffee, so she held up her cup to be filled, smiling, and then started to butter a soft bread roll, stealing a few pieces of Claudia’s bacon to fill it. Claudia gave her a mock glare.

“She’s okay, I guess,” Myka sighed. “She’s not like my wife at all.”

“Really?” Claudia said, clearly curious. She had opened her eyes, at least. “What’s your Helena like? How did you guys get together?”

Myka told her about Helena, about the Bronze, turning in James MacPherson, the grappler, their marriage, the baby. Claudia looked impressed and a little disturbed by the information.

“What? Why do you look like that?” Myka asked, gesturing at Claudia’s general visage.

“I… I was just wondering how our Helena went so crazy, and yours sounds so normal,” Claudia said, frowning a little. “I mean, I love our HG, she’s legit awesome, but she was pretty batshit back in the day,” she continued, chewing on another piece of bacon reflectively.

“I don’t know, Claud,” Myka said. “My Helena – her daughter died of cholera. Christina in this world was murdered. It was hard for my Helena to get over it, and she has been having therapy ever since she came out of the Bronze – the Regents insisted on it.”

“Hmm. The Regents here just turned her loose and then blamed her when she went crazy,” Claudia said morosely. “Did she tell you about that whole Janus coin deal?”

“No, but Pete did. It seems… it seems insane to me, to think that splitting her soul from her body would make things any better. She… someone else was walking around in her body. I mean, what was she supposed to do with that information? When she was back in her own body, I’m surprised she didn’t go crazy right away. Someone else living inside your skin for – how long was it? A year?” Myka asked, her face twisted in revulsion. The Regents in this reality had a lot to answer for.

“Yeah, well, that’s what they thought was best. And Walter Sykes was the one who took her out of it, and then he got her to open this chess lock thing by putting Myka in it. If she didn’t solve it, Myka was going to die, you know? Then she sacrifices herself to save everyone. It was all so messed up, Mykes. And after that, even after Artie vouched for her, the Regents took her away again. It’s no wonder her head is messed up. I’m not saying it’s okay that she’s shacked up with the man-mountain and the kid, but I understand why she would want to be away from the madness. But our Myka – she was so heartbroken. When she came back from Boone – God, I’ve never, ever seen her look like that. Not even when Leena died,” Claudia said, morosely staring at her coffee cup.

“It sounds like there have been more than a few obstacles in their way,” Myka murmured. “Have they ever…?”

“What? Done the horizontal mambo? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. I think I would have been able to tell. Myka’s not the best liar, you know?”

Myka laughed.

“I know. I’m totally not a good liar at all,” she said, and Claudia flushed.

“Man, this is so weird. You’re her, but you’re not her – it’s totally confusing!”  
Myka laughed for a long moment, before sobering.

“It is. And I really, really need to get home. I miss my Helena. We’ve got a baby on the way, and I don’t want her to miss any of it. We just need to work out what’s going on, and try to fix whatever the problem is.”

“I have an idea,” Pete said, having just arrived as Myka was finished speaking. “I have a vibe. Did you touch Helena’s locket at all, in your own world, when you said you were kissing and then you passed out?”

Myka thought for a moment.

“Yes, I did. I was playing with the chain, and I touched the locket, and it was right then that I started feeling weird, and then I passed out.”

“Right! Well, Myka – our Myka – she had that locket when Helena died in the other timeline. And she definitely had it in Wisconsin. I know she doesn’t say much, but she feels a lot. If she was ever going to make an artefact, then the combination of losing Helena both those times? That would totally do it, right Claud?”

Claudia nodded solemnly. Mrs Frederic had been teaching her about artefacts and how they were created.

“So, it has to be something to do with the locket. Did you have it on you when you woke up, Myka?” Pete asked.

“I didn’t notice if it was in my pockets or something. I definitely wasn’t wearing it, but it could have been in my pants or my jacket without me noticing. They’re back at the B&B anyway, so I’ll check when we get back.”

“Okay. Cool. We should probably take off now, the flight is in two hours. Is HG ready?”

Myka sighed. “I have no idea. Guess I better go find out.”

She left them in the hotel’s restaurant and went to check on Helena, half-expecting her to be gone. She had just finished showering and dressing, however, and was blow-drying her hair. Myka sat down wordlessly for a moment, watching. It was her favourite time of day, (other than morning sex, of course) watching Helena dry her hair. Her hair was wonderful, wave upon wave of glossy black, and something about watching it made Myka feel at peace for a few moments each day. As Helena finished with her hair, she noticed Myka watching her, and she stood there, speechless, for a long moment.

“What is it?” Myka asked, concerned.

“Ah… nothing,” Helena said, attempting to avoid the subject.

“What is it?” Myka repeated, this time more firmly.

“You… the way you looked at me – it was different. Myka doesn’t look at me that way,” Helena said.

“Really? I’m pretty sure she looks at you exactly that way, Helena. But maybe she’s frightened of how you’ll react. You haven’t given her any reason to think you might feel the same, from what I gather.”

Helena gritted her teeth.

“You shouldn’t speculate on things about which you know nothing,” she hissed. 

“Maybe not. But maybe you should take a more honest look at this life of yours, Helena. It doesn’t look like you’re happy – not to the people who know you, anyway,” Myka said, packing her last few belongings in her case and closing it briskly. Helena glared at her for a moment, but said nothing. 

“Are you ready to go? We have a flight to catch,” Myka said. Helena nodded, and they grabbed their bags and headed downstairs, meeting Pete and Claudia at the hotel reception. Steve had gone to get the car. They all fitted into the large SUV that Pete had hired – Claudia assured Myka that her car would be returned to the B&B, and told her not to worry about it, so she didn’t. The flight was half-empty and Helena sat as far from Myka as she could manage, all the way on the other side of the aisle. Myka just sighed and took a nap.

When they arrived back at the B&B, Abigail showed Helena to her room, having been warned by Pete or Claudia that she was coming. Abigail looked a little star-struck, which made Myka chuckle to herself. She remembered being that starry-eyed herself when she’d met HG Wells for the first time.

She went to her room and found, in the corner, the jeans the other Myka had been wearing when she fainted. After fishing around in the pocket she found Helena’s locket, which she then brought downstairs to Pete.

“I think we should bring this to the Warehouse and talk to Artie. What do you think?”

“Do I get any say in this?” Helena’s voice was caustic enough to melt the paint from the walls.

“Not if it means I get to go home, no,” Myka snapped. Helena glared.

“All we want to do is try neutralising it for now, Helena,” Pete said, clearly trying to calm things down. Helena looked at him for a moment and then nodded, her jaw tight.

They made the drive to the Warehouse in silence. Myka noticed that Helena kept giving her sidelong glances. The looks were filled with frustration and longing and anger. Good – let her look, let her see what she’s missing, what she could have. Maybe that would make the artefact do its thing and Myka would get to go home to her wife.

Myka followed Helena upstairs awkwardly, steeling herself for a night sharing a bed with Helena. Not her own world’s version of Helena, but a Helena nonetheless. When she reached the room Helena was sitting on the bed, leaning forward with heels of her hands pressed into her eyes, her elbows on her knees.

“Are you okay, Helena?” she asked. “I can sleep downstairs somewhere; Mrs Frederic can’t force us to share a bed if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Helena took in a deep breath, looking up slowly.

“I’m sorry, Myka. I… you must think I’m awful. I don’t want you to sleep anywhere else, it’s just – this is all so completely confusing, and I miss my wife, and you’re her, but you’re not. I don’t think we’re built to process things like this. Stepping between realities, it’s… well, even for minds as exceptional as ours, it’s a bit of a stretch. Just go and get ready and we’ll get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning, I’m sure,” she said, her face open and sincere. Myka nodded, smiling tentatively, and she   
looked around for a moment before Helena pointed her to the right drawer for her night clothes.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth, changing into comfortable cotton pyjamas that blessedly didn’t show too much skin. She went back into the room that was hers and not, and looked at the vision that was Helena Wells, stretched out on the bed waiting for the bathroom to be free.

“I’m all done,” she said lightly, and Helena looked up and smiled.

“Thank you, darling,” Helena said, with a broad smile. She went into the bathroom and emerged five minutes later wearing a similar outfit to Myka. That made Myka smile, because Helena was always a satin and silk kind of person, or at least she used to be. But who knew what she wore to bed now? The thought of Helena sharing a bed with Nate made Myka’s teeth clench. Thankfully she was already in bed and Helena couldn’t see her expression, so she took a few deep breaths and calmed herself. This wasn’t her Helena, and she didn’t deserve Myka’s ire.

Helena got into bed next to her, her body clearly tense. Myka took a slow, deep breath before touching Helena’s arm gently.

“Just relax, Helena. Get some sleep, okay?”

“I’m sorry, Myka,” she said, turning to face her, leaning up on her elbow. “I’m sorry. This must be so awful for you. Your Helena is an idiot, if I may be forgiven for saying that.”

“Thank you,” Myka said softly, and Helena leaned forward to kiss her gently on the forehead.

“Good night, darling,” she said.

Myka didn’t sleep for a long time. When she finally dropped off, she woke again a short time later with Helena’s arm around her, her hand tucked into the top of Myka’s pyjama bottoms, holding on to Myka’s hipbone lightly. Helena’s face was pressed into her neck, and her breathing was coming in little snorts. Myka didn’t know what to do. If she woke Helena, she would embarrass her, and if she didn’t, and Helena realised that she’d been awake, she’d seem like the weird pervert who was desperate to be touched, even if that touch was meant for someone else. So she lay there, frozen in panic until tiredness pulled her under. When she woke in the morning, Helena was still in the same position, still wrapped around her, and it was amazing. She felt perfect, tucked under Myka’s arm with her head snuggled in under Myka’s chin. Myka didn’t want to move; she wanted to stay there forever, with Helena against her. She felt extremely bad for feeling that way, because this wasn’t her Helena. There was another Myka out there somewhere, and she was this Helena’s wife. It was wrong to enjoy this, but there was more than a small part of Myka that wanted to stay here forever, and damn the consequences.

“Good morning, love,” Helena murmured against her neck, kissing it gently.

Myka stiffened, and Helena looked at her blearily, confused.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, and Myka stared at her, wondering if she’d ever get the chance to see Helena like this again, with her face slack from sleep and her hair in disarray.

“Oh, God…” Helena said, suddenly, as sense returned. “I’m so sorry, Myka. I didn’t do anything inappropriate, did I?”

She suddenly realised that her hand was on Myka’s hip, and she pulled it back as if she’d been burned.

“I’m so sorry, Myka.”

Myka shook her head.

“You don’t need to apologise, Helena. I don’t know what Mrs Frederic was thinking, making us stay together. It was bound to happen – you’re used to sleeping with your wife, for God’s sake. It’s okay, anyway. Let’s just go see if they’ve made any headway into finding a way back home for me and your Myka,” she said, sighing.

“Of course,” Helena said. “But would you mind… could I hold you, just for a minute, Myka? I know it’s odd, but I miss her so much, and…”

She looked so lost that Myka just smiled a little, nodding her head. Helena pulled her close, holding their bodies together, and it was probably only a moment, but for that one moment, Myka felt content. Her face was pressed into Helena’s neck and she took a deep breath, breathing Helena in. She didn’t know how she was going to survive without this, truth be told, when she went back to her own universe.  
Helena kissed her hair, squeezing her for a moment before releasing her.

“You smell just like her, you know. It’s all so odd,” Helena said contemplatively. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Myka said. “Your Myka is a lucky woman.”

“I like to think it’s the other way round,” Helena said, chuckling. “But I’m glad you think so.”  
They took turns showering and went down for breakfast, where Myka spent her time enjoying the company of both Helena and Leena, both of whom she had missed intensely. It was like going back in time to before Yellowstone, when things had been – well, nothing was ever normal where the Warehouse was concerned, but when they had all been together, and Myka had felt like she belonged.

“For the first time in a century…”

Helena’s words came back to her when she thought about belonging, and her body tensed as she fought the urge to cry. How could this incredible woman next to her be one and the same with that Helena who had hurt her so blithely, as if she didn’t even care what she was saying, and how much it would hurt?

After a moment she felt Helena tugging at her hand, and she turned to see that Helena was gesturing towards the door. Myka followed her mutely, and Helena led her to the library where she enfolded Myka in her arms, stroking one hand up and down Myka’s back gently.

“I could feel you tense, and I wasn’t sure what was wrong, and I thought perhaps you’d rather not cry in front of the others,” Helena said gently, and as she did, Myka realised that she was crying. Silently, this time, not sobbing as she had been yesterday. But crying nonetheless. She let herself go, resting her head on Helena’s shoulder and feeling the tension drain from her slowly as she let the tears flow as they wanted. Helena simply held her tightly, rubbing her back and comforting her as she had done the previous day, and Myka loved every moment of it, while still hating the fact that she could never have it with her own Helena.

“Thank you,” she said, after a long time. It had been at least half an hour, if not longer, and Helena had simply waited for her.

“You’re quite welcome, darling,” Helena said softly.

“How do you know – how do you always know what I need?” Myka asked.

“You forget, darling. I’ve been with Myka for over two years now. We’ve spent the majority of that time together in close quarters. We love each other, and when you love someone you try to look out for them. I know when Myka is upset, and since you’re her, you have most of the same tells. So what was it?” she asked, drawing Myka along with her to sit on the couch.

“I… I was thinking about how nice it was to be with you and Leena and everyone else. How when things were like that, back before Yellowstone, I felt like I belonged. And then I remembered something that Helena said to me when I saw her in Boone with her boyfriend and his daughter. She said, “For the first time in a century I feel like I belong.” And I… it just hurt so badly, you know? Like she’d never felt like that with me. All I’ve been doing for this last eight months or so is waiting; waiting for her to come back, and she told me that she didn’t want anything to do with me, and then said all this stuff about how she belonged there and the Warehouse ruined her life. And I just let her go, Helena. I let her say those things, and I let her go, because I was so fucking hurt, you know? I figured if I said what I really felt and she still stayed, it would have hurt that much more. So I didn’t say anything, and I got in the car and Pete drove me away and I waved goodbye like she was just my old friend from college, which is, by the way, how she introduced me to her new family.”

Helena took in a sharp breath through her teeth.

“Jesus. I’m so sorry, Myka. I don’t know what she’s playing at. I know… I’m sure it doesn’t reassure you that much, given that she and I appear to be so different, but I know that she loves you. She can’t not love you. Whatever she’s been doing, the running away, hiding with this man and his daughter – I suspect it has very little to do with you, and much more to do with her.”

“Thank you,” Myka said, finally. “Should we go to the Warehouse, see if they’ve come up with anything?”

Helena nodded, and they went to join Pete, Claudia and Steve who were getting ready to drive to the Warehouse. Once they arrived, Artie turned in his chair and glared at them all grumpily.

“Good, you’re here. We think what we have here is a wishing artefact. It is Mrs Frederic’s belief that Myka here, from the other world, inadvertently made a wish that the locket interpreted as a wish to be here, in our world. It’s likely to do with Helena but that is none of our business and I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” he said, glaring fiercely. They all nodded in response.

“So, what we need to do is recreate the circumstances of the initial wish, and Myka needs to wish to return to her world, and everything will go back to normal,” he said.

“Okay,” Myka said, nodding. Helena took her hand and grabbed the neutraliser bag that Artie was holding out, and pulled her towards the Warehouse. They walked slowly together towards the section where Myka had passed out in this reality, and Helena held her hand tighter and tighter as they drew nearer.

“What is it, Helena?” Myka asked, gesturing to their joined hands.

“I just… I don’t want you to have to go back there. Of course I want my Myka back, don’t get me wrong. But Helena – she’s treated you so badly, I hate the thought of you returning to her. You deserve better, darling.”

She was flushed and staring at her feet, and Myka thought she couldn’t possibly have loved her more.

“Thank you, Helena. I can only hope that she’ll get her head together and realise what we could have, but if being here with you has taught me anything, it’s that I deserve better than this. Being abandoned and lied to and treated like a stranger – I don’t deserve any of that. So if she doesn’t come round, and she wants to stay in Wisconsin with the boring man and his daughter, then I’m done. I deserve to be loved, and I won’t let her treat me that way anymore. I can see how you feel about your Myka, and I want that, Helena. I want it for myself. So if she won’t give that to me, I won’t wait anymore,” Myka said, tears welling in her eyes. “Thank you.”

Helena smiled at her, and there were tears in her eyes too.

“Well, here we are,” she said, gesturing at the shelves around her. “This is where you – she – fainted.”

“Okay,” Myka said. She held out her hand and Helena poured out the locket and chain from the neutraliser bag.

“How do we do this? Should you be wearing the locket, like you were then, or should I just hold it?” Myka asked.

“I think we should probably match the circumstances as best we can,” Helena said, and she took the locket from Myka’s hand and fastened it around her neck.

“Oh,” Myka said, “You mean you want to…”

“I think we should replicate the circumstances exactly,” Helena said, shrugging slightly. “If it’s   
uncomfortable for you…”

“No, it’s fine,” Myka said quickly. If nothing else, at least she would get to kiss Helena once more before she went back home.

“Righty-ho then,” Helena said cheerfully. She stepped forward and put her arms around Myka’s waist. Myka curled one hand around the back of Helena’s neck and with the other she touched the locket. They leaned forward as one and kissed gently, and then more fervently, and it was all Myka could do to focus on what she was supposed to be doing – wishing to go home – when she was being so thoroughly kissed by this incredible woman. She concentrated hard, however, thinking about her home and her Helena and her life at the Warehouse, and she took a deep breath, waiting for the artefact to take her back. After a moment, however, she was still standing with Helena’s mouth on hers, and her hand was in Helena’s hair, and they were just making out. Which was amazing, but that meant that there was more to this wishing artefact than they’d thought. Or Myka didn’t truly want to go home, which was something she didn’t really want to contemplate. She allowed herself a moment longer of kissing Helena, and then drew back with a sigh.

“It didn’t work, Helena. I’m sorry.”

Helena was flushed and her lips were red and parted, her chest heaving unsteadily.

“Oh. I thought for a moment, when you took that deep breath, that you’d switched back.”

“I’m so sorry, Helena. We just need to give it more time, or more research, or something,” Myka said. She truly was sorry; she could see how much Helena wanted her wife back. But she could also see how much Helena wanted her, for who she was, and it was intoxicating. Was that why she was still here? Was she really that selfish?

They walked back in silence, both lost in thought, still hand in hand. Myka’s mind was racing. How were they ever going to fix this if she couldn’t honestly say that she wanted to go back home, to a place where Helena didn’t care about her and Leena was dead? Was she really selfish enough to try to steal another woman’s wife – another woman’s life? Even if that woman was her? She was very much afraid, right then, that the answer was yes.


	3. Chapter 3

_First of all, my apologies that this has taken me so long to write. This is the final chapter of this fic. Well, the_ first _final chapter. The second final chapter will be along soon. (This is a very long chapter, btw - around 16k words. Just so you know!)_

**Final Chapter #1**

When they arrived at the Warehouse, Myka was hungry again even though she’d just had breakfast, so she raided Pete’s secret stash of goodies from the drawer in the corner. When Helena lifted an eyebrow at her, she shrugged, her mouth full of candy.

“I’m pregnant. I’m eating for two.”

“Eating for two future diabetes patients, you mean?” Helena said scathingly, and Myka shot her a filthy look.

Artie turned in his chair and gestured brusquely for them all to sit down. Helena sat as far from Myka as she could manage, and so Pete sat next to Myka, holding her hand and giving her a sympathetic look. She smiled at him, trying to stop tears welling up in her eyes. It really was no wonder that the other Myka didn’t want to stay here, in this reality, when Helena was being this way.

Artie held out his hand, and Myka remembered the locket, and handed it over. He dropped it carefully in a neutraliser bag, where it sparked intensely, but when Artie looked at Myka, she just shrugged.

“Still me,” she said, apologetically. There were a few sighs around the room, the loudest of which came from Helena. Artie cleared his throat.

“We believe that the locket has become some sort of a wishing artefact, imbued with our Agent Bering’s feelings of loss and grief when Helena died in the alternate timeline, and her feelings when she went to… ah… well, you know what happened, you were there,” he said, harrumphing loudly to cover how uncomfortable he was. “In any case, we believe it to be a wishing artefact, and it’s possible that if this Agent Bering makes a similar wish on the locket, it might reverse matters. So, I would ask, Agent Bering, that you go to the HG Wells section and make a wish to return to your own universe, and for our Myka to return here, to this one. It may not work, but it’s worth a try, since neutralising it had no effect.”

Myka nodded and started to make her way to the HG Wells section. Pete made as if to come with her, but Helena pushed past him to join her. Pete lifted an eyebrow as if to ask “Are you okay?” and Myka just shrugged.

“Goodbye, you guys – if this works. If not, I’ll see you soon.”

She blew them a kiss and followed Helena into the Warehouse.

“Why did you come with me?” she asked Helena curiously.

“Well, it appears that this situation is at least partly my fault, since the locket was mine, and the circumstances that made it an artefact were of my making. So, I thought it was only fair that I accompany you to return to your world,” Helena said stiffly.

Myka sighed.

“No-one is making you come with me, Helena. If you want to be here, fine. But I’d rather be alone if you’re just here out of some sort of sense of guilt or whatever.”

Helena stopped.

“I’m not here out of guilt. I just wanted to be here, to say goodbye and to welcome my Myka – that is, our Myka – back to her world.”

“Okay,” Myka said, nodding. They continued on and when they reached the HG Wells section, Myka held up the locket.

“Here goes nothing,” she said, and Helena reached out, taking her hand.

“Wait.”

Myka lifted an eyebrow curiously.

“I just wanted to say – I’m sorry, that you’ve been brought here, that you’ve been away from your wife like this, because of something I did. I… regret some of the things I said to Myka, and I wish I could apologise to her. I hope that you are able to go home safely. And I’m sorry for the way I’ve been with you. I just didn’t want to come back here,” she said, gesturing around at the Warehouse. “I have spent the last century here, incarcerated, trapped in my own mind, and then when I woke up, utterly mad, they didn’t help me. The Janus coin, what they did – it hurt me profoundly, damaged me more. It’s only now that I’ve been away that I’ve recovered even a little from all of it. And I think that I have unfairly lumped Myka in with all of that, when in fact she was probably the only positive thing in all of it. She’s a wonderful woman, and I’ve been awful to her. She doesn’t deserve what I’ve said, what I’ve done.

“And yet she still loves you enough that her pain from losing you created an artefact, Helena,” Myka murmured, looking at the locket, the chain woven around her fingers as she spoke. “She still loves you, and you still love her. I can’t force you to do a damn thing, but your happiness, that place where you belong – it’s all here, at the Warehouse. Even after everything that has happened to you, this is your home. Just… just think about it, okay?”

Helena nodded, and held out her arms. Myka stepped in to them and they hugged for a long moment, then she stepped back.

“Okay, here we go,” she said, and she stared at the locket, wishing fervently to return to her world, to go back to where she belonged. The locket… _pulsed_ , somehow, but nothing changed. She was still standing with an expectant Helena in the other Warehouse, the one that wasn’t hers.

“Damn,” she said, staring at the now inert locket in her hand.

“Ah. I did wonder whether it would work,” Helena said, frowning. “I think it’s possible that both lockets have to be touched at the same time, for the exchange to work. Since it seems that’s how this happened in the first place.”

Myka stared at her.

“Well, how the hell are we supposed to know when they’re going to do it? It might not even be the same time in my universe. It could be another time-stream altogether. My Helena might be dead and gone by now. What the hell am I going to do?” she said, rather predictably bursting into tears straight away.

Helena pulled her close and she cried on her shoulder for a long time, eventually calming herself enough to wipe her face with Helena’s ever-ready handkerchief. She did not move away from Helena’s embrace, however, needing the comfort and support. After a short while, Helena murmured that they should go back to the others, tell them that it didn’t work.

Myka turned her head, looked at Helena, and that was all it took. She wasn’t sure who moved first, how it happened, but they were kissing and it was amazing, a little different from how it was with her Helena but also exactly the same; beautiful and wanton and hot and somehow just right in so many ways. She came to her senses when her hands made their way under Helena’s shirt, of their own volition, it seemed, and she suddenly stepped back.

“I’m sorry, Helena. I didn’t mean…”

Helena put her hands in her pockets, avoiding Myka’s gaze.

“I’m sorry, Myka. I… I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t just you. You’re a married woman; I should respect that.”

“Of course,” Myka said. Her body, however, was saying that _this_ was the body it wanted, and it didn’t care what universe they were in. She loved Helena and she wanted to make love to her. She was pregnant, for Christ’s sake, and her libido was at an all-time high. They walked back together in silence, both with flushed cheeks. Their expressions told the others everything they needed to know – clearly, they were back to the drawing board.

Myka and Helena explained briefly that nothing had changed, and Artie sighed. 

“Back to the drawing board, then. You two,” he said, gesturing at them vaguely, “go and do whatever it is you do; no point in you wasting your time here too. Helena, keep an eye on her. She’s too thin.”

Myka was astonished. It wasn’t like Artie to notice things like that, never mind for him to actually say anything about it. She was too astonished to even say anything, and Helena simply nodded, pulling Myka along in her wake and back in the car to the B&B.

When they arrived there Helena had a quiet word with Leena in the kitchen. Leena was plainly reading Helena’s aura, and said something to her in a murmur, looking concerned, and Helena said something back and then they hugged. Myka, watching from the doorway, was surprised once again by how different this Helena was. Her Helena had never got on with Leena – clearly that was because she had been hiding her plans and the twisted state of her psyche back then. It was a wonder, Myka thought, that her Helena was anywhere near as sane as she was, given everything she’d been through. It would have broken most people irreparably, and yet Helena was still standing, albeit in a relationship that Myka didn’t believe was healthy, with a child who was clearly a surrogate for her lost daughter. But still, she was standing, she was a productive member of society, so far as these things could be judged. Myka felt faintly ashamed, for a moment, that she had judged Helena so harshly for hiding away in Boone. She had no earthly idea what she would have done in Helena’s position. It wasn’t that surprising that the woman had hidden herself away from the Warehouse. Maybe it was kinder to leave her where she was. Myka hadn’t considered that, not really. Sure, she’d told Helena to make that place her home, she’d supported her, outwardly at least. But they both knew that she was heartbroken, and Helena probably even now was feeling guilty about that. She didn’t deserve to feel guilty about anything else. She’d paid for her crimes, even given up her own life to save Myka. Maybe the kindest thing would be to let her break her bonds with the Warehouse and let their relationship lapse into a Christmas and birthday card sort of thing. Helena clearly had people around her who cared about her. Maybe it was time for Myka to move on.

“Are you okay, darling?” Helena asked, tilting her head in concern. “You look like you lost something precious.”

Myka forced herself to smile, trying to make it look real.

“I’m fine, Helena. Thank you for worrying, though.”

Helena’s eyes lingered on her as they sat in the library, Myka apparently absorbed in a Dickens novel that didn’t exist in her universe. Leena brought in some tea and cakes that were Myka’s favourites in this reality. Myka smiled at her thoughtfulness but didn’t take any of the cakes; her appetite had disappeared entirely. She drank tea in silence, smiling at Helena occasionally.

She did become absorbed in the novel eventually, and Helena finally stopped watching her, finding a book of her own to read. They sat in companionable silence until Leena called them in for lunch.

It was just the three of them. The rest of the gang were still at the Warehouse, presumably trying to work out how to send Myka back home. Myka wasn’t sure they were going to be successful; she wasn’t sure that there was any chance of them being successful if she didn’t actually _want_ to return to her own world. She was lost in thought, eating whatever was in front of her without comment, not noticing Leena and Helena sharing worried looks. After a while, Leena touched her arm gently to get her attention.

“Hey, Myka. What’s going on up there?” she asked, pointing at Myka’s head and smiling. “Your aura is all over the place. Do you want to talk about it?”

Myka looked up to see Helena and Leena both watching her carefully.

“Ah… no, not really. I mean, it’s nothing new. I just… I’ve been thinking about my Helena, and then I was thinking about this world, and how different it is here. And how nice it is to see you again, Leena,” she said, her eyes filling. If she did end up going back to her own world, she thought Leena would be the thing she missed most. Or she’d be second on the list, at least, behind this version of Helena, who was now watching her with soft eyes and a gentle smile.

“I know you miss her. But if I know her, and I do, she died knowing she was doing the right thing, Myka. And she’ll still be there, in the Warehouse, looking after you guys. But that’s not what’s bothering you,” Leena said, smiling softly.

Myka looked at her uncertainly. She’d never really been able to get a handle on Leena’s gift, on how it worked. Could she see what Myka was hiding? That she didn’t really want to go back home?

“I’ve been thinking about my Helena. I think I’ve been unfair to her. When I saw her in Boone, she was okay – more okay than I’ve ever seen her, since Yellowstone. I mean, I only saw her a handful of times, and most of the time she was in that damn Janus coin. God knows where she was when she was in that coin, what she was going through. And I never even tried to help. I thought she was in prison somewhere, and that’s all I wanted to know. And then I met Emily Lake. And I realised that she – Helena – was separated from her body, and Emily Lake, this counterfeit person, was walking around in her body. Can you imagine what that’s like? Someone else walking around in your body, and doing whatever they want with it? I mean, she seemed pretty normal, she was a schoolteacher, but she could have been into anything. And Helena will never know what happened to her body during that time.”

She put her head in her hands, and Helena rubbed her back softly, murmuring comforting words.

“I feel like I should let her go. I love her, I love her so much, but she deserves to be happy. And who am I to decide for her what she should do? The Warehouse – the Regents – they’ve treated her like they own her, so why wouldn’t she want to be away from that? I haven’t defended her the way I should, and I think… I think she deserves better.”

“If that’s how you feel, you should tell her, Myka. If nothing else, she deserves the chance to know how you feel and to make her own decision. She can’t make a decision if you don’t tell her how you feel,” Leena said.

Helena nodded in agreement.

“I don’t know her, Myka. I think it’s plainly obvious that she and I are different in many ways. But assuming that she and I were brought up similarly, and shared many experiences, and that we share the same personality traits – well, I know that I would prefer to know, no matter how difficult it made my life. I would prefer to know that someone I loved was in love with me.”

Myka shook her head.

“I don’t think that’s true, Helena. I think that if she was in love with me – if she wanted me the way I want her – she wouldn’t have been able to stay away.”

“And yet, you _have_ stayed away from her. We talked, if you remember, and you said that you hadn’t asked Claudia to find her. And it would have been relatively easy, wouldn’t it? If she was still living under her assumed name?” Helena asked, one eyebrow up. Her voice was still gentle, and her forgiving nature made Myka feel even worse.

“I guess,” Myka said, hanging her head a little in shame.

“Well then, don’t judge prematurely, Myka. You don’t know, is the simple truth. She could love you, she could be indifferent, she could be so many things. But you lied to her, you told her to stay there, to make it her home, I believe were your words. So how was she to know how you felt?”

Helena’s tone was reasonable, but all it did was make Myka feel ashamed. Ashamed that she hadn’t helped her Helena more, that she hadn’t interceded on Helena’s behalf with the Regents, that she hadn’t pushed for Helena to get some sort of psychiatric treatment at the beginning. Helena had been held inside a prison of her own mind for over a century. That was enough to send anyone crazy, never mind someone who had already been driven past reason by the death of her daughter.

“You did your best, Myka,” Leena said. “She was sick, and what she did was evil. She hurt you, badly, and she killed people. You weren’t responsible for her wellbeing. I agree that maybe you could have done more, but it isn’t your fault, Myka. She did this stuff, and the Regents in your world, Artie, Mrs Frederic – they all bear responsibility for what happened to her. And to you.”

“She’s right, Myka,” Helena said softly, still rubbing her back gently. Myka smiled at them both.

“Thanks, guys. You… thank you. I guess I should think about things a little,” she said, getting up from the table. “You okay if I go and lie down for a while?” she asked Helena.

“Of course,” Helena said. “Whatever you need, darling.”

Myka smiled again and made her way upstairs to her room – or rather, her and Helena’s room – and lay down on the bed for a while, cuddling her teddy bear which was still in the room. At least she and her counterpart weren’t that different – they’d both kept the teddy, despite being adults. Some things just made you feel better.

It was an hour or two later when Helena came up and lay next to her, lacing their fingers together.

“How are you feeling, darling?” she asked quietly.

“I’m okay, I think,” Myka said. She’d been thinking about everything, turning it over and over in her head, and she was pretty sure about what she was going to do when she got home. Because she _was_ going home. It was unfair and selfish and wrong of her to stay here, where the other Myka belonged. And this Helena – the love and care that she so sweetly offered – it didn’t belong to her. She had to go. So they had to work out how to do that, and when.

“You’re ready to go home, aren’t you?” Helena asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

“Yes,” Myka said, with a gentle smile.

Helena lifted Myka’s fingers to her mouth and kissed them gently.

“You deserve better, Myka,” she said quietly.

“Maybe you’re right, Helena. But if I deserve better, then maybe I should demand better. And if Helena isn’t the one to give it to me, then so be it. I’ll keep looking. Being here, with you – you’ve shown me what I could have, Helena, and for that, I will be eternally grateful. Your wife is the luckiest woman. I hope she knows that.”

There were tears in Helena’s eyes, and she leaned forward and kissed Myka gently. Myka tried not to respond, tried to keep the kiss chaste and dry, but Helena’s lips were soft and yielding and Helena wound her fingers into Myka’s curls and when Helena whimpered, Myka lost all sense of what was right and wrong and where she was. There was only her, and Helena, and a bed.

Luckily she came to her senses before the bed part of matters could come into play. She pulled back suddenly, despite not wanting to in the least, and took a deep breath, setting her forehead against Helena’s.

“I think it would probably be best if we tried the locket again,” she said, breathlessly. “Because if I stay here much longer I’m not going to be able to stop myself.”

Helena nodded, her hand still in Myka’s hair.

“I think you’re right, darling. I love my wife, but I’m starting not to care that you’re not her,” Helena said, carefully removing her hand from Myka’s hair and running it through her own with a sigh.

“Thank you,” Myka said, her eyes closed. “Thank you for showing me this; showing me how amazing things could be. And please, apologise to your wife for me. I could have stopped this, any time. I didn’t want to. I’m selfish; I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Myka. How does anyone even begin to process something like this, honestly?”

“I don’t know,” Myka mumbled. She took a deep breath and moved away from Helena, sitting up. “I think we should try again tonight, see whether it works this time.”

“Maybe this time you will really want to go home,” Helena said gently. Myka turned to look at her.

“You knew?”

“It seemed… more than a possibility. Since she caused you such a lot of pain, and I’m – well, assuming that your wish was to have a Helena who loves you unreservedly – I would be that Helena. I know in my head that you’re not my Myka, but my heart – it doesn’t know the difference. So it would make sense, if that was what you wanted, then your wish to return home might not necessarily be sincere.”

“I’m sorry,” Myka said, in a small voice.

“You don’t need to be. In your situation I think I would have held on to you, darling, and never let go, and damn the other Helena.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Myka said softly.

“Perhaps. But we’ll never know, love. In any case, I don’t blame you. And I admit I don’t want to let you go. I want my Myka back, but I hate the thought of you being hurt again.”

“Thank you for caring so much, Helena.”

They lay on the bed in silence for a while, and Myka let her mind wander, not thinking about anything in particular. It was peaceful and she knew that this was one of the things she would miss most, if Helena decided to go back to Boone. The way they could just be with one another and be content, without speaking. She’d never experienced that with anyone else.

They had dinner with the whole gang – even Dr Calder came along to eat with them, and Myka looked around the table feeling that sense of belonging. Steve, Claudia, Pete and Kelly, Artie and Vanessa, Leena, Abigail, Helena – they were all her family, and she wished that they could all be together in her reality. She decided, however, to take this as a gift, this last dinner with Leena, with Helena, and she would hold it in her heart and use this joy to get through the difficult times.

All too soon it was time to go to the Warehouse, and Myka gave hugs all round. She had a feeling that it was going to work this time, for some reason, and she held them all for too long before letting go and following Helena to the car. It was time for her to go home, no matter how reluctant she was. She would speak to Helena in Wisconsin or wherever she was, and she would make her peace with whatever happened next.

 

* * *

 

 

They ate a quiet dinner with the rest of the team. Myka noticed that the B&B felt totally different without Leena. Abigail did her best but she just didn’t have that… well, aura that Leena had, that welcoming, loving _something_ that she exuded from her skin. And Kelly wasn’t there. _That_ was strange, seeing Pete without his wife. And Pete – he looked at her a little differently, here. Like he had back when they were first partners, like he had expectations. She hoped that the Myka from this reality headed that one off quickly. Unless she didn’t want to, of course. Who knew what she would want, if Helena made good on her threats and went back to Boone. Helena was currently avoiding her gaze, but the tension of their earlier kiss was still lingering, and Myka felt guilty, but also she felt excited, like there was something burning between them. She wasn’t sure how to feel, really. Sure, this wasn’t her Helena, but she was still Helena Wells, and she was in love with Myka, no matter how much she denied it. It was a tricky situation all round. In some ways, she just wanted to throw caution to the wind and take Helena to bed. She didn’t think that Helena would resist, and Myka’s libido demanded to be satisfied. In more than a few ways, it made sense. If she made love to Helena, the woman wouldn’t be able to deny what was plainly between them. But it was technically cheating, as was all of their other contact. But how does a heart, a mind, a body tell the difference? She was willing to bet that her Helena would be faring little better, faced with a heart-weary, sad version of her wife. She would want to comfort her, to make her feel better, and if she wasn’t careful… well, Myka didn’t want to think about that too much. She didn’t really want to think about any of it; she just wanted to get home. She had no idea, however, how she was going to achieve that.

After dinner Myka went to her room, saying goodnight to everyone and selecting a book from the library first. She was exhausted; the early stages of pregnancy were taking it out of her, and her vomiting jag of the morning had hurt her abdominal muscles. She lay down with a groan, and had no sooner opened her book than Pete knocked on her door.

“Hey Mykes,” he said, bounding over to her bed and sitting on the edge. She looked at him expectantly.

“What’s up, Pete?”

“Well, I was just wondering how you’re holding up, with everything,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of her uterus, she guessed.

“I’m okay, Pete. Just a little nausea and tiredness,” she said, smiling.

“So, you’re really married to HG?” he asked, plainly settling himself in for a long chat. She sighed internally, but smiled at him. He was like a big puppy, just bounding around enthusiastically, and then there was his unfortunate habit of licking everything…

She told him how she and Helena got together, and he made appropriate noises at the appropriate places. She sensed he had a question to ask, however, so eventually she pierced him with a sharp look.

“What is it, Pete?” she asked.

“Uh. Well, do you think – do you even think this Helena is any good for her? Because my Mykes, she’s been so sad, so lost this last while. I didn’t get why, because I didn’t realise that she was like, in love with Helena or whatever. But I hate seeing her that way. And when we came back from Wisconsin, she was destroyed. I just… I don’t know if bringing her here was the best idea,” he said, gesturing in the general direction of Helena’s room.

“Honestly, Pete, I don’t know. Helena is different from my wife. Seriously different. But she’s been through a lot. Imagine someone doing that Janus coin thing to you, after you’d already been trapped for over a century in the Bronze sector? My Helena still can’t sleep with the light off, and she went in their voluntarily, without being crazy first. She wanted to see what the future would be like, and she was so hopeful about it, but by the time she came out? She was lost, Pete, and it took a long time for her to get better. The Regents here didn’t even help your Helena, right? So just try and put yourself in her place. I can’t tell you if she’s good or bad for Myka. I only know that I love Helena Wells, and it seems like your Myka does too.” She shrugged, and Pete looked at her searchingly.

“I guess, maybe, I’ve been a little hard on her. I mean, she saved our lives. She died…”

“Yeah. And I can guarantee, Pete, that she died to save Myka. The rest of you – she would have done it for you, even if Myka hadn’t been there, but it still would have been for her, you know? She talks a good game, like she doesn’t care, Pete, but she loves her. The way she kisses – I can tell, she loves me – I mean, Myka.”

Pete’s mouth dropped open.

“Dude! You… she kissed you?”

Myka flushed. She hadn’t meant to share that… she wasn’t proud, exactly, of her behaviour.

“I… well, yeah. I mean, when we were in Boone, she told me she didn’t love Myka, and I… well, let’s just say I used underhanded tactics to prove that wasn’t true. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was mad, Pete. I had just driven all that way, and I’m in a freaking parallel universe, and I was hungry and tired, and, well. I just kind of lost my head a little. Anyway, let’s just put it this way. She loves Myka. She might still decide not to stay here, I don’t know. But she definitely loves her.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Thanks, Mykes. I’ll let you get some sleep,” he said, slapping her leg gently.

She lay there for a while thinking, then picked up her book for a while. She couldn’t concentrate, so she went to change and went to bed early, turning her light off, leaving a small night light on out of habit. Her Helena couldn’t sleep without a night light.

She woke up a little while later, reaching out automatically to wrap herself around Helena sleepily, but Helena wasn’t there. It was a bitter realisation, and thinking about the Helena from this world, the lengths she’d gone to in order to hide from this world’s Myka – it was all too much for her – or rather, for her pregnancy hormones. She started to cry, and after a minute or two the silent tears turned into sobs. She missed her wife, she missed Leena, she missed her world where things made sense. She didn’t hear the door open, but she felt Helena get into bed behind her and pull her close, kissing the back of her neck.

“It’ll be okay, Myka. We’ll get you home, I promise.”

She turned into Helena’s body, burying her face in her neck, and cried herself out, aware that this was the second time in 24 hours that she’d cried in Helena’s arms. Hardly a way to make her want to stay, she thought wryly. But it was a good sign that Helena was willing to comfort her at all.

She calmed down eventually and said thank you, wiping her face with a tissue from her nightstand.

“It’s okay, darling,” Helena said. They were face to face and it was just natural to lean forward, to take comfort, and she knew that her Helena would understand. She leaned in and they kissed gently, carefully, sweet and searching, until it wasn’t gentle any more. Myka was a raging ball of need, and Helena kissed like she felt the same way, like she couldn’t hold back. It wasn’t long before hands were straying and without underwear to provide a barrier to searching hands, it was too easy for those hands to go where they shouldn’t. Myka pulled away, took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing Helena’s hands, stopping them where they were. “I… my hormones are crazy, and I know Helena would understand, but it’s still… it’s wrong. But would you – would you stay, Helena? Just hold me? I don’t want to be alone tonight. This world of yours, it’s so strange to me. Just… stay?”

Helena nodded solemnly, her breath coming in short gasps. Myka pulled her a little closer. Helena’s head was tucked under her chin and her arm was slung across her Myka’s body, hand grasping her hip. Helena kissed her hair.

“Goodnight, darling.”

Goodnight, Helena.”

The next morning, things were still, quiet. Neither of them spoke, they just smiled gently and got ready separately. They went down for breakfast and Pete was his usual bouncy self, while Steve was quiet and contemplative, though he did give them a sly smile as he took in their closeness. Myka smiled back. It seemed that no matter the universe, she and Helena gravitated towards one another. Claudia had her head buried in a cup of coffee, her eyes still partly closed, and when anyone tried to speak to her she just muttered unintelligibly.

Artie was there, surprisingly, despite there being no pings that morning.

“Myka, we think that you and the other Myka need to activate the locket at the same time. I don’t know how we can achieve it, but Mrs Frederic just said, “she’ll know when,” and disappeared, which was spectacularly unhelpful. In any case, I thought perhaps you all might like to take the day, and you can try again this evening, to see if the locket works this time.”

With that, he was gone, and they all looked around at one another in astonishment.

“Did he just give us the day off?” Pete asked, his face lighting up.

“It would appear so,” Helena said, looking astonished.

“Mario Kart tournament!” Pete shouted, and Claudia suddenly came alive, dragging Steve into the living room to set up whatever gadgets she needed for the tournament. Helena and Myka stared at each other and then shrugged.

As long as there’s food, I’m happy,” Myka said, and Abigail and Helena laughed.

“I hope we get to see our Myka pregnant one day,” Abigail said, chuckling. “She never eats – seeing you like this, it’s so strange…”

Myka laughed, but Helena looked both pained and thoughtful at the idea. Myka smiled slyly. She hoped that Helena’s thoughts were going in what she considered the right direction; the direction of her and Myka having a future and a family together.

They played Mario Kart, which, as it turned out, Myka sucked at. Helena beat all of them soundly, leading to Claudia and Pete both bowing at her feet. Myka enjoyed the spectacle thoroughly. Helena was in her element, laughing, her head thrown back.

Pete had told Myka some of what Helena said to her counterpart in Boone, and it made her smile to think that Helena had ever believed that she didn’t belong here. She was part of this family, as much as she denied it, and as she watched Helena play stupid games and argue about popcorn toppings and arm wrestle with Pete, Myka’s heart swelled. Helena caught her eye just then, and mouthed “Are you okay?” Myka just smiled. Helena was the one who was okay, and she just needed to realise that. She was safe here, she was at home here – this was where she belonged.

They ate lunch and then spent a pleasant afternoon having a Harry Potter marathon, since Helena had only recently started reading the books with Adelaide and she wanted to see the movies. Myka had seen them, of course, but she was fascinated by the slight differences in this universe. In her world, Sirius Black had adopted Harry after the events of the Prisoner of Azkaban, and he’d lived through the final battle, becoming Hogwarts’ longest serving Defence against the Dark Arts professor. Remus Lupin had a brother called Romulus, also a werewolf, and Lavender Brown had married Cho Chang, something that was revealed in the “19 years later” section. But the basic plot was the same, from what she could tell, before she fell asleep. She woke with her head in Helena’s lap, and Helena’s hand stroking through her hair. She didn’t move, not wanting to disturb Helena from her unconscious touching.

“You can stop pretending to be asleep, I heard your breathing change,” Helena whispered.

“Fine. Just as long as you don’t stop that,” Myka said, smiling brightly as Helena mock-glared at her. But she didn’t stop, and Myka counted that as another tick in the win column.

They all ate together, even Artie and Dr Calder, who he was apparently courting. In her world, they had married many years ago, but she didn’t mention that to them. She was fine trying to influence Helena – after all, she knew that Helena was hiding from what she really wanted. But Dr Calder and Artie would find their own way, or they wouldn’t.

They toasted to absent friends, and Myka choked back tears. Leena was really gone, here, but she was alive and well where she was from. It was so unfair. Helena saw her get upset, and wordlessly took her hand and squeezed it. Myka smiled at her gratefully. All too soon, however, it was time for her to go to the Warehouse to try again. She kissed and hugged them all, feeling somewhere in her gut that this was going to work. She could, as Mrs Frederic had predicted, just feel it.

She and Helena drove to the Warehouse in silence, and Helena courteously fetched the electric stagecoach so she didn’t have to make the long walk to the HG Wells section. When they got there, Myka stood there nervously, turning the locket over and over in her hands.

“So, I guess this is goodbye,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Helena said. “You’re sure it’s going to work this time?”

“I guess you could say I have a vibe,” Myka said with a smile. “So, are you gonna think about things, about everything we talked about? Because I really think you could be happy, Helena.”

“I promise. I will think. I will talk to Myka. But I don’t appreciate the way you railroaded me into coming here.”

“Oh, please,” Myka said dismissively. “If you weren’t attracted to her, if you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t have come. So maybe I gave you a bit of encouragement, but if you didn’t want her, you wouldn’t be here at all.”

Helena looked at her sternly for a moment, before her expression softened.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said reluctantly, looking at her folded hands.

Myka felt the locket pulse, somehow, in her hands, and she knew it was time.

“It’s time, Helena. Good luck,” she said, leaning forward to kiss her gently. Helena kissed back, her lips soft, and she sighed as Myka moved away.

“Goodbye, Myka. I hope you get home to your wife,” she said, and Myka nodded. She closed her eyes and held the locket tightly, picturing her life, her wife, Leena, her friends. The world started to fade around her, narrowing to a pinpoint, and then all she saw was darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

Myka said her goodbyes, hugging everyone, holding on extra tight to Leena, who whispered in her ear again that her counterpart would be watching over Myka. Myka let the tears come as Helena drove them quickly to the Warehouse.

All too soon they were standing in the spot where this had all started, Helena’s locket around her neck, and Myka’s hands wound around the chain.

“It’s going to work this time,” she murmured, and Helena nodded.

“I know, darling.”

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Myka said, her eyes brimming once again.

“And I, you,” Helena said simply. “I hope that she comes to her senses, Myka. Because you are wonderful. I’ve never met anyone else who is your equal, Myka Bering. Your Helena is a fool if she does not choose you.”

“Thank you, Helena.”

They both felt it – the pulse of the locket against their skin. They stared at one another for a long moment, Myka drinking Helena in, her eyes so bright and carefree, her heart open and sincere, love written all over her face. It had never been clearer to her that this was not her Helena, but a Helena who was unbroken by life, by tragedy. How she wished her Helena could be this open, this happy, this uncomplicated.

“Goodbye, Helena,” she said, before leaning forward to kiss her once more, fervently and insistently, tasting every inch of her mouth in case it was the last time. She broke away, leaning her forehead against Helena’s, and then concentrated on her own world, her own life, her family, broken though they were. The edges of her vision began to dance and whirl, and the world danced on the end of a pin. She let blackness swallow her.

 

* * *

 

 

Helena had done many things during her lifetime that others would characterise as evil. Some, she too would characterise that way. Allowing those boys, the students, to die finding Warehouse 2. Turning on Myka, trying to end the world. Those were evil things. But of all the evils she had perpetrated during her time on this earth, it was the petty, small cruelties she had wrought that stung her conscience the most. Disappearing after the Astrolabe was safe, hiding from Myka. Her relationship with Nate - a relationship built entirely on the fact that he had a daughter who reminded her of Christina. Nate, of course, still had no idea who she truly was. He knew that her name was really Helena, but he continued to call her Emily. And Adelaide – well, the child was intelligent, truly, and she had seen straight through Helena’s attempt to be brisk and business-like when saying goodbye.

“Helena,” she said, seriously, stilling Helena’s fingers which were busy adjusting the collar of her pyjamas. “You aren’t coming back, are you?”

“Of course I am, darling,” Helena said, with an attempt at a scoff, but the girl’s dark eyes held hers solemnly.

“I don’t know,” Helena finally whispered.

“Okay,” Adelaide said. “It’s okay.” She patted Helena’s hand while Helena cried. Small cruelties, petty and tired and unworthy of her. Like telling Myka that she belonged there in Wisconsin; like telling Myka that she didn’t want anything to do with the Warehouse, and by extension, Myka.

Last night Pete Lattimer had knocked on her door. She’d been hiding from Myka; hiding from them all, truth be told. She didn’t like how easily she had slotted back into her old place in this world, this world that she had rejected. She didn’t like how much like home it felt.

Pete had smiled at her in his easy, boyish way, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

“Good evening, Pete. How are you?” she asked.

“I’m okay,” he said, coming to sit down on the edge of her bed. She was leaning against the headboard with her legs stretched out as she tried to read. She had been unsuccessful, her mind drifting to Myka – both the alternate Myka in the other room, and her Myka.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Pete said hesitantly. That was unusual. Pete was anything but hesitant, generally.

“I wanted to know – do you really love her? Our Myka, I mean? Because before this Myka turned up, I had no idea. I didn’t realise that there was anything between you, like that. I mean, you did that whole ‘many of my lovers were men,’ thing back in the day, but I just didn’t realise.”

She nodded, an indication for him to continue.

“I didn’t realise that she felt that way about you. I mean, I knew you were close, after she left and everything. But I didn’t realise she had those kinds of feelings for you.”

It seemed it was her turn to speak.

“I didn’t realise either, Pete. For a long time. I have always been attracted to Myka; I can’t lie about that. I didn’t know, myself, that it was anything more than attraction, I don’t think; not until Yellowstone. When she put her gun in my hand. I knew I could never hurt her, and I was so mad then that I would have killed everyone in the world. But not her. I suppose that’s a rather telling sign, isn’t it?” she said, laughing self-consciously.

“So why are you doing this?” he asked, curiously. Not judgementally. He genuinely didn’t understand.

“I am not entirely sure I can articulate it, Pete. I can only tell you that the Regents gave me my freedom and I ran. As hard as I could, until I couldn’t anymore. And I met Adelaide, and then Nate, and it was all so easy. And I hadn’t seen Myka for months. It was much easier to ignore all of this, to ignore my own feelings, without seeing her. When that bloody artefact turned up, I was… well, I was shaken.”

“That’s why you were so weird when we came to get it, huh?” he asked, fingers plucking idly at the material of her duvet cover.

“Yes. And then she told me to stay, to make my home there, with Nate. You understand that Myka and I have never actually talked about any of this, Pete? So I assumed that either her feelings had changed, or that I had imagined their existence in the first place. Until you arrived again. The other Myka was able to demonstrate quite conclusively that those feelings exist – certainly for her, at least.”

“Yeah, so she told me!” he said, grinning slyly. She couldn’t help it; she grinned back. He offered her his hand for a high five and she returned it, chuckling.

“Anyhow, I suppose my answer is that yes, I am in love with her. I didn’t want to be. I wanted to hide away with my small, boring life in Wisconsin but it appears that my fate is in Myka’s hands. When she comes home, I suppose we shall have to talk matters through and make a decision in a more adult way than we have done so far.”

At Pete’s waggling eyebrows, she rolled her eyes.

“By adult, I mean actually talking about things, rather than running away from them, Pete. Not by shagging like bunnies.”

His eyebrows waggled even more, and she shook her head in mock disgust. After a moment, she sobered.

“I promise, Pete, that I will do my utmost not to hurt her any more than I already have. If I go back to Boone, I… I think it will be because she wants it that way. Is that enough for you?”

He nodded solemnly, and she nodded back. It held significance, that promise, and it hung heavy on her now as the other Myka passed out in her arms. Only time would tell which Myka awoke in this body.

She dragged Myka back to the Electric Stagecoach, positioning her in such a way that her body leaned against Helena’s but her hands were in contact with the bars. She drove them slowly through the Warehouse until they reached the office. Myka remained unconscious, however, so she called Pete for assistance.

Some twenty minutes or so later, Pete and Steve arrived with a stretcher. They carried Myka to Pete’s SUV and they drove home, carrying Myka to her bed once they were home.

“Will you stay with her, Helena? Or do you want me to?” Pete asked.

“I can manage, Pete,” Helena said, nodding. He nodded back, clearly placing his trust in her. She decided she would not abuse it again.

Myka showed no sign of stirring, so Helena wrapped herself in a spare blanket, lying on the bed next to Myka, but on top of the covers. She managed to stay awake for another hour or so but eventually gave in to sleep, despite her racing mind.

 

* * *

 

 

Myka woke slowly, stretching her body languorously. She could sense that Helena was nearby, and that felt both right and wrong. The events of the last few days returned to her and she wondered which world she was in and whether the locket had returned her or not. She still couldn’t say for sure that she’d really wanted to leave the other world. Being with a Helena who was so plainly in love with her had been a wonderful experience, and she’d been able to speak to Leena, to spend time with her. It wouldn’t have been overly surprising if she had wanted to stay there subconsciously.

She opened one eye experimentally, and could see nothing but the bedcovers. She opened the other and pushed the covers away from her face enough that she could look around the room. She breathed a small sigh of relief. It was her room – no bathroom, no extra closets and drawers. But still, Helena was here. She was lying on top of the bedcovers, wrapped up in a blanket that had once belonged to Myka’s grandmother. She looked peaceful and beautiful, as ever. Myka reached out a hand tentatively to touch the dimple in Helena’s cheek. She wanted to touch Helena before she wasn’t allowed to any more. She traced Helena’s lips gently, and then ran her fingers gently up to her temple and into her midnight-black hair.

Inevitably, gentle though she was, her touch woke Helena.

“Hey,” she said, softly, as Helena opened her eyes.

“Hey, yourself,” Helena said, as she took in Myka’s soft smile. “Are you… which Myka?”

“It’s me, Helena. Your Myka. From this world, I mean. I’m home.”

“Oh thank God,” Helena said in a rush, throwing herself forward to wrap her arms around Myka, squeezing her tightly.

“Wow,” Myka said, squeezing back. “I didn’t expect this kind of welcome,” she said, drawing back and smiling.

“You didn’t expect it from me, you mean?” Helena asked, but her face was open and smiling.

“Well, yes,” Myka said hesitantly, pushing her hair away from her face.

“Well, the other Myka asked me to come here, to help get you home. I found that I couldn’t resist.”

Myka looked at her quizzically.

“How did she convince you?” she asked.

“Ah… well, let’s just say she was rather hands on…” Helena said, ducking her head slightly. Myka chuckled.

“Well, her wife is much the same, if that makes you feel any better,” Myka said, flushing a little.

“Well, then, it sounds like we both have interesting stories to share. Firstly, though, we should go and tell the others that you’re home,” Helena said.

“Of course,” Myka said, smiling. She got out of bed, noting that she was fully dressed, still – presumably her counterpart had been dressed in this yesterday. It felt strange to know that someone else had been in her body. But then, she’d been in her counterpart’s body too. Or had she? How had it worked? Since she hadn’t been pregnant. She shook her head a little and decided not to think about it too much. These things inevitably made little sense.

She went downstairs, Helena hovering in her wake, close but not touching. When they went into the dining area, everyone looked at them expectantly.

“It’s me, guys. I’m home,” Myka said, and there were a chorus of cheers from everyone, even Dr Calder who apparently had stayed the night at the B&B, for the first time that Myka was aware of. She didn’t have time to think for a long time, however, because she was swallowed up in embraces from Pete, Claudia and Steve, a limp handshake from Artie, who nonetheless looked extremely pleased to see her, and a side-hug from Abigail, who she still didn’t really feel like she knew.

They ate breakfast, trading stories of the other Myka and the other universe. The differences were stark, now that she was here, and this world seemed a little darker. Leena wasn’t here, and Myka’s future with Helena remained uncertain. She remembered Leena’s words to her, however, and tried to take comfort in that.

After breakfast she and Helena went back to her room, by tacit agreement. Myka sat down on her bed, watching Helena carefully. She knew it was stupid – Helena had been here the whole time she’d been away, but she still expected her to bolt. Helena was standing near the door, however, which was not a particularly reassuring picture.

“So,” Helena began, and then stopped. She didn’t appear to know what to say.

“I don’t know where to start, either,” Myka said softly. Helena came to sit on her bed, close but not too close.

“How did you fare, over in the other world? Was it nicer, there? With Leena alive?” Helena asked, apparently idly.

“It… it was surprisingly okay, Helena. I guess by now you know what happened, why I ended up there?” she asked. She tried not to blush, knowing that her longing for Helena had actually created an artefact that had caused so many problems for her friends and for a whole other group of people in another universe.

“Yes,” Helena said, looking at her directly for a moment, and then looking away. Myka did blush, then, and she took a moment to quash her embarrassment.

“Well. I got my wish, in a way, because – man, the other Helena - she loves her Myka. She really loves her, and she has love to spare. It was… it was amazing,” Myka said, and her eyes focused on nothing, clearly far away. She didn’t see the look of jealousy that passed over Helena’s face.

“I see,” Helena said, her face tight. “And… did you come to any conclusions, while you were there?”

“I did,” Myka said, her gaze returning to meet Helena’s. “I made some decisions, about the future, about what I want.”

“And?” Helena said delicately.

“And.” Myka leaned forward and took Helena’s hands in hers, leaning back to pull her a little closer. She didn’t let go. She looked directly at Helena, and her gaze was open and sincere.

“I decided that I want to be loved like that. I want someone to love me with their whole heart, to love me no matter what. I want that, Helena, and more than that – I deserve it.”

Helena stared at her.

“And what does that mean?” she asked, finally.

“It means – the next step is up to you, Helena Wells. You looked at me when the Regents were taking you away, and you mouthed something to me. You said you loved me. Is that true?” Myka asked, finally being brutally honest. She was tired of pretending, of dancing round this. It was time to make or break.

Helena swallowed thickly.

“I do,” she said, and her voice was hoarse, but clear. “I love you. I have loved you since not long after we met.”

Myka looked at her, her expression not changing for a long moment.

“You know that I love you. I mean, you must, right?”

Helena nodded solemnly.

“So what now?” Myka asked. This was the part she was nervous about. She knew what she wanted. But if Helena didn’t want this – what then?

“I don’t know,” Helena admitted. “I think… I believe that I would like to take some time to myself, to consider.  Away from Nate and Adelaide, and…”

“Away from me.” Myka finished for her.

“Yes,” Helena said, flushing slightly. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Myka. I do.” She squeezed Myka’s hands tightly. “I do love you. But I need some time to work out what I want. I thought, when I was with Nate and Adelaide, that I was content. Perhaps I was. But these last few days – yes, it wasn’t you. But the other Myka showed me what I could have, here with you, and here at the Warehouse. It’s… it’s very enticing. The idea of being here, being with you and with Pete and Claudia and Steve and even Artie… I believe it is what I want. But I want to be sure, and I think a little distance will allow me to make a decision based on what I need, rather than on simple emotion. Will you allow me that?” she asked sincerely, but Myka’s stomach still dropped. She didn’t believe Helena would come back; it was as simple as that. However, she remembered what she had said to the other Helena. If Helena didn’t want her, she deserved someone who did, and she would continue to look for that. She deserved it.

“Of course, Helena. You know, when I was there, talking to the other Helena, I thought a lot about how we left things in Boone. I thought about how maybe I was being selfish. Because you’ve been through so much, and I think you deserved a lot better from everyone here. You should have had help, right from the beginning, and the Warehouse let you down. And later, I let you down. I left you to the Regents, to the Janus coin, and I was so lost in how I felt that I didn’t see what they were doing to you. So I want you to know… if it makes you happy, staying with Nate and Adelaide, then I’ll support you. I’ll be your friend, even if it’s from afar. You deserve that.”

Helena stared at her for a moment, before throwing herself forward and holding Myka to her.

“I’m sorry, Myka, to do this. I know it will hurt you, but I want to be sure. I would rather do this now than realise at a later date that I made the wrong choice and hurt you even more. Thank you for being so understanding,” she whispered, squeezing Myka tightly. “I love you.”

And then she was gone. She got up and left the room, and Myka let her leave. She lay back, taking deep breaths, pulling herself back from the brink of tears. It was better this way, truly. If they were ever going to be anything to one another, Helena needed to be sure, and Myka needed to be sure of her. No matter how much it hurt to hear Helena say that she was uncertain, when love really should be enough… it was hard to hear. She held the memory of the other Helena to her like a security blanket. If Helena never came back, or if she went back to Boone – Myka would use that memory, that feeling, and she would carry on looking for the right person. Because Helena in the other world had taught her that she was worthy, that she deserved to be loved for who she was. She grabbed her teddy and squeezed him tightly. Time would tell, she supposed. She settled in to wait.

 

* * *

 

 

Helena went downstairs and after a whispered conversation, Pete agreed to give her a ride to the airport.

“You sure about this, Helena?” he asked, and she smiled.

“I’m not sure of very much right now, Pete, but I am sure that this is the right thing to do,” she said, her mind already on her destination.

After a number of delays, she touched down at Charles De Gaulle around 24 hours later. She was exhausted, physically and mentally, and she needed rest. But first she needed to do what she’d come here to do.

She gave the cab driver the address, her accent probably archaic, but he nodded and took her to Christina. She stood in front of her daughter’s coffin and noted the repairs that had been done to the handle that used to house the Minoan Trident. She thought, for a moment, about who she had been then, when she took those insane measures to reset the world, to begin a new civilization. Not only had she been hopefully arrogant, deciding that she had the right to decide for everyone on earth, but she had defiled her daughter’s grave. She had used it to hide the Trident from the Warehouse, so that she could destroy the world – all because of Christina’s death. It was a distant memory to her, now, that state of mind. The madness was all but gone. HG Wells had no more grand plans to enact. HG Wells had made herself small, now. A woman who wouldn’t be noticed by anyone, hiding as she was in the suburbs.

She reached out and touched the wood on her daughter’s coffin.  She traced the grain with a finger, taking a deep breath.

“Hello, my beautiful girl,” she began, in a thick voice. In some ways, she knew she would always live in that moment, the moment the telegram arrived and destroyed the world as she knew it.

“I have missed you so very much, my darling girl. When I look at this world, I see the opportunities that you should have had. I see the life that you could have lived. And I mourn again. What sent me mad, I think, was not only my own arrogance in believing that time was mine to toy with, but the possibilities that I had seen for you, all of the potential that you had and those men destroyed. I love you so much, my sweet girl. I do not believe in a god who takes little girls from their mothers, but if there is a deity, I hope that it has seen what you could have been. I hope that you are out there, somewhere, in the world, living a new life where you have been given every opportunity to thrive.”

She kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to the coffin, leaning her forehead against her hands.

“I am somewhat lost, my dear child. I find myself at a crossroads. On one side lies a woman I love very much, and she has opened her heart to me, offering herself in a way that I do not deserve. And on the other lies obscurity, but a family. A child that I love, and a man that I don’t. I was content there, but in these past few days, despite pretending otherwise, I have been happy. Happy is something I had never hoped for, not after I lost you. I felt I didn’t deserve it after I let you die. But that is part of my own arrogance, I suppose. To assume that I had both the responsibility and the ability to keep you safe from anything. The responsibility, certainly. But not the ability, not really.”

She stopped to take another deep breath.

“I love Myka. There is no question of that. I believe that we could be partners for life, even raising a family together. I believe that it’s possible. But I ran away from her, and I don’t trust myself, now. Because I was content in Boone, and I let myself forget Myka. I let myself forget HG Wells.”

She pushed her hair back from her face, frustrated.

“I must go, for now, my darling, but I will return. I miss you,” she said, kissing her fingers and pressing them to the wood again.

She went to check in at a nearby hotel, sleeping for nearly 18 hours, and by 9am the following morning she was walking in the park opposite the hotel.

Something she had said without thinking when talking to Christina the day before kept coming back to her. “I let myself forget HG Wells.” She hadn’t thought about it, not that way. But in Boone she had assumed more than Emily Lake’s name. She had assumed a whole new identity. Some of it was familiar – mother, scientist. But she had also lost who she was, obscured herself in the roles of Nate’s partner, a role she had never wanted. She hadn’t invented anything since leaving the Warehouse. Even when she was planning the end of the world, she had still invented. Small things, usually. A new type of transistor that she thought might help the Farnsworths work better, or an attachment for Claudia’s belt to allow her to carry her Tesla and Farnsworth together, while still hiding them tidily under her jacket. Tinkering had always been a part of Helena Wells, before HG Wells had come into existence. And then there was her writing. She had stopped writing down ideas, sentences, paragraphs about this world or that, about how technology or knowledge changed the path of human history. She hadn’t even thought about any of that. She had buried herself in the PTA, in Adelaide’s life, in being a soccer mom. And she hadn’t realised, not until now, how much she was itching to be herself again. If Myka wasn’t a part of the equation, Helena rather thought, now, that she might have awoken one day by Nate’s side and realised that being there wasn’t what she wanted. Myka’s words came back to her.

_“You are denying who you are to chase a ghost.”_

Those words felt true. Myka was right. She had become someone else; Emily Lake was a fake name, of course, but Helena had let Emily become who she was, and had left HG Wells, Helena Wells, behind.

She found a bench by the small offshoot of the Seine that ran through this park. She loved moving water. It reminded her so much of time. Time had been her lifelong adversary. She had fought against the constraints of society in London so very hard, but when she stepped out of the Bronze so much of her fight had already been won by time that she had relaxed. She had relaxed so much that she had become the thing she had most despised. A woman lost in a man’s shadow. She huffed out a breath of surprise and amusement.

Well, that settled part of all of this, at least. She didn’t love Nate, so leaving him wouldn’t be a hardship. Adelaide, though. That would be the painful part. She loved the girl to distraction. She was so much like Christina that she had grown into the space behind Helena’s ribs, had put out roots and had taken up residence there. But it was no more fair on Adelaide than it was on Nate, really, for Helena to stay. Because it was a lie, all of it. She would try to make it right, somehow, but she would have to rely on her old adversary, time, to mend the rest of the pain she had caused.

So part of her quandary was resolved, and with it, a sigh of relief made its way up from what felt like her toes and out into the damp air. Watching the steam from her breath disappear in the wind, she wondered if there were worlds out there where her daughter had lived and died a normal, happy life, and she, Helena George Wells, had too. She wondered idly what that would have looked like. She didn’t think she would recognise a happy, uncomplicated Helena Wells if she saw her in the mirror. She wondered why Myka wanted her and not the other version of Helena, since her counterpart was unburdened by the rage and madness that had almost ended the world. Surely, if she had the choice, Myka would have chosen the joyous, loving version of Helena, and not this sick, ageing soul with nothing but loss and death following her? She didn’t understand why Myka had even tried to come back. She didn’t think she would have, in Myka’s place. But then she was awfully selfish.  

She returned to the hotel to eat a light lunch in her room, and wandered for a while afterwards buying macarons and various other sweet delights. Myka would love those; especially in her pregnant state. It took a moment for reality to set back in and remind her that pregnant Myka was back in her own universe with a version of Helena who deserved her. Helena surprised herself by feeling a sting of loss at the idea of Myka pregnant with a baby that was to be theirs; their daughter or son. A daughter or son with Myka’s eyes, with Myka’s intelligence and passion. It was a compelling picture, and while she couldn’t imagine herself being lucky enough to be part of that, she let it settle into her, the idea. What would she have done, she wondered, if the other Myka had been forced to stay here, in this universe? Because that Myka loved her, in an uncomplicated and intense way, and she hadn’t lived through the Trident, Yellowstone, betrayal and Boone. Helena didn’t know, truly, if she would have been able to turn her back on that.

And yet, here she was, contemplating turning her back on her Myka, on the woman who had stood by her, the woman who had forgiven her even after Yellowstone. The woman who had, only a day or two ago, told Helena with complete sincerity that they would still be friends, that she would let her go back to Nate and Adelaide and that she would truly support her if that’s what made her happy. Myka was incredible in any universe, but Helena couldn’t quite believe how incredible she was in this one. It occurred to Helena that, in an alternate timeline, she'd already died for Myka. Perhaps it was time to think about living for Myka, instead.

She thought little for the rest of the day, immersing herself in books and television, letting her mind work in the background, worrying at the problem. She had resolved some of the most knotty problems she’d faced that way; letting her mind relax, think about something else, and eventually something would click and she would just know the solution. And this problem was perhaps the most simple and the most complex of all those she’d faced in her lifetime. It was more about who she was, really, than who she wanted. She knew that if love were the only consideration, then Myka would be the only contender for her heart. But there was the Warehouse to consider, the good and the bad that it brought with it. Because Myka and the Warehouse – they could not be separated at this juncture.

She watched several episodes of a television programme called “Orphan Black” in French. She was a little rusty so she was proud when she managed to understand about 2/3 of the dialogue. The show was wonderful, too. Imaginative and fascinating, bringing up ethical issues about the science it imagined. And the lead actress was incredible. Helena let her mind drift and enjoyed it thoroughly. She fell asleep an hour or so later, drifting imperceptibly into dreams of infinite clones of herself and Myka; of them coming together, marrying, having children, dying, losing one another, loving one another, and everything in between.

The following morning she woke to find she had made her decision, somewhere in the confusing flurry of images her brain had provided in her dreams. She was going to return to Univille and she was going to offer herself to Myka, mind, body and soul. The Warehouse – that part of the equation could be worked out later. For now, she was returning as Myka’s partner, assuming that Myka hadn’t changed her mind. She would find somewhere in the town to rent, and they would take matters from there.

She showered and dressed, returning to Christina’s grave. Now that she had made her decision, she felt a sudden need for haste. She had to go to Wisconsin, of course, to say goodbye and pack her things. And then she would return to Univille, to the B&B – to Myka.

This time she said nothing, just traced the wood of the coffin with her fingertips, her eyes closed. She didn’t know where Christina was. She had no true beliefs as to the nature of life after death, of souls being reborn, or any of it. But she knew that her little girl had loved her, and that meant something to her. She had loved her daughter so much that it had changed the world. She had travelled through time because of her love for Christina. But now it was time to let go. Christina was gone, and no matter what she had tried, Christina had stayed dead, and she had become mad and evil. That time was over, and it was time for her to accept that and truly move on. Boone had been a regression, an attempt to grasp at what she had lost. Univille and Myka were her future, and she would make it a future worth living in, in whatever small way she could.

“Goodbye, my darling daughter,” she whispered, and kissed her fingers, pressing them to the coffin for one last time.

 

* * *

 

 

Today was the day. Helena had called, two days ago, and told Myka shyly that she wanted to come back. Myka’s heart, bruised and fragile, had beat so hard in her chest that she’d thought words like “palpitations” and “acute MI” before realising that it was just… hope.

Helena had called, and told Myka that she wanted to come back. That she was renting a place in Univille for now, until she decided what to do as far as the Warehouse was concerned. Claudia was looking for somewhere appropriate. Helena was ‘loaded’, as Claudia put it, from bank accounts left to her by Charles, just in case. He had never believed the official story given to him by the Regents of Helena’s death in the line of duty, and had set aside some of his earnings for her. After 115 years, the interest was considerable.

“I’m coming back, love, and of course we need to talk, and urgently, about everything. But I also owe an apology to Nate and Adelaide, and I need to collect my belongings. I will be back the day after tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Myka had replied, breathlessly, feeling shocked and hopeful and so many other things that she didn’t have words for the emotions racing through her.

So today was the day, and Helena would be coming through that door, and she wanted Myka. As it turned out, the days they’d spent apart had been a good thing for Myka too. Artie had refused to let her work, taking one look at her wan face and barking at Pete to take her back to the B&B. She’d had plenty of time to think, and she had used the time wisely. This thing with Helena – it had its hooks in her, that much was certain. It was love, and she would bow to it, but she would not break. She was still Myka Bering. She wasn’t a mouse to be cowed and broken if Helena chose someone else. She would be sad, yes, but she would move on. She’d done her moping and dwelling. Helena in the other universe had showed her what it felt like to be happy, and she would continue looking for that if Helena insisted on hiding away, on making herself small so that fate wouldn’t notice her.

She sat cross-legged on her bed, reading a new case file that Pete had sneaked to her. She couldn’t go out to the snag, but she could look at the details and help. After a while, her absorption paid off, and she contacted Pete using her Farnsworth. She picked out the victim’s son as the holder of the artefact based on lines he’d quoted during his interview with Pete; lines of a poem that related specifically to the person who’d created the artefact. Her eidetic memory was a bonus sometimes.

The knock at her door made her jump, and then she remembered. It was today.

She pulled open the door and smiled. Helena was there, dressed almost exactly as she had been that day in the cemetery at Dickinson’s funeral. Bustle and all. She looked beautiful, and Myka drank her in, like a cool draught.

“You look… calm. Content,” she said, after looking at Helena’s soft smile for a long moment.

“I am,” Helena said simply, and she stepped forward and pulled Myka to her. Myka pressed her nose to Helena’s hair and breathed in. Something about the scent of her had always made Myka feel at home.

“I missed you,” Helena admitted, and Myka smiled into her hair.

“I missed you too,” she said, and she pulled Helena into her room and locked the door.

“Where are your bags?” she asked, noting that Helena wasn’t burdened by any luggage.

“Downstairs,” Helena said, and Myka breathed a silent sigh of relief. She’d half thought that Helena had changed her mind again, that she was just coming her in person to let her down easy.

“So,” Myka said, pulling Helena to the bed. They sat side by side, and Helena smiled broadly at Myka.

“So, here I am,” she said, and Myka smiled back after a moment.

“Yeah, here you are. You came back.”

“I did.” Her face turned a little more serious. “I know that it must have been hard, to wait, once again, while I went off and left you. But I thought it better to be sure, love. The other Myka showed me a vision of an intoxicating future, and I wasn’t sure that I could be objective with you nearby. And I also needed to see Christina.”

“You were in Paris?” Myka asked softly.

“Yes. I think, in large measure, my decision to go out with Nate, to move in with him and Adelaide, was because I hadn’t let her go. I still… I would still have brought her back, had the opportunity presented itself. And I needed to address that,” Helena said, taking a deep breath.

“And? Have you?”

“I have. My daughter is at rest, and much as it pains me to say it, I have accepted that. She is at rest and I am alive, and I believe that she would have wished me to be happy. And while I was content in Boone, I was not truly happy. And more to the point, I was not _me._ I was Emily Lake, soccer mom and lab technician. I haven’t written anything, researched anything, invented anything, since I left the Warehouse. Even when I was planning to end the world I was making trinkets and doodads,” she said thoughtfully.

“I remember,” Myka murmured, and Helena smiled at her, reaching out to take her hand.

“I have missed you, Myka Bering,” she said, and they both knew she was not just referring to the time she had just spent in Paris.

After a moment of silence, Myka asked her the question that was running through her mind over and over.

“So, you went back to Boone. What made you decide not to stay? You said you felt like you belonged,” Myka asked, blandly.

“I did say that. It was true, and not, at the same time. But I love you, and while part of me wants to run back to Boone and hide with Nate and Adelaide, I know that it is a lie. A lie that has hurt you and me both, not to mention Nate and Adelaide themselves. So I suppose the question is, what do you want from me? I love you, and if you’ll allow me, I will stay by your side for the rest of my life. I will love you with everything I have. But only if it’s what you want,” Helena said, her face hopeful but also frightened.

“You still want to go back there, to live with him and his kid?” Myka asked, her tone level and her face set.

“In some ways it would be easier, yes. It would be a way for me to hide from everything, to pretend to be someone else. To deny who I am, as you so aptly put it, darling. But as I believe I said to you once, one mustn’t run away from one’s truth. You are my truth – you, and this group of strange but wonderful people; even the Warehouse itself. Yes, the other Myka had to drag me here, but it’s only my foolishness that made that necessary, love. I know that this life; here, with you – it’s where I truly belong. You knew that as soon as you saw me in Boone, Myka.”

“I did. I knew. But you told me that you felt like you belonged _there_ , Helena. I mean, I don’t see you for nearly a year, and that’s what you say to me? I didn’t know where you were, and Artie told me that you’d – that you died, Helena, for me, in the alternate timeline. He told us all, after Leena… he told us that you’d died to save all of us, but later he told me that you’d died for me. You told me you loved me, Helena, then you disappeared, and the next time I saw you, you were playing house with Nate, the most boring man in the world, and you told me that you wanted nothing to do with me.  So how do I know you won’t run off again, Helena?” Myka asked, one eyebrow raised. She didn’t bother to hide her pain and her disgust at finding Helena with someone else.

Helena winced several times as Myka hit her mark, but when Myka finished speaking, she took a deep breath and looked at Myka sincerely.

“I suppose you’ll just have to trust me. Trust that I love you enough to be brave.”

Myka looked at her searchingly for a long time, and Helena just looked back, letting Myka see into her depths, through all the lies and the pretence and everything she’d done to bring them here.

“You know, I spoke to the other Helena, and I told her that maybe I should just let you go. Because you seemed like you were happy there. I know how much you’ve had to deal with here, in this century, and I know that I haven’t exactly helped,” Myka said, and she looked at her fingernails, playing with them to avoid looking at Helena.

“Are you out of your mind?” Helena asked, sounding astonished.

“What?” Myka asked huffily, looking offended.

“You think that you haven’t helped me?” Helena asked, incredulous.

“I let the Regents take you after Yellowstone,” Myka pointed out. “I didn’t try to find you, to talk to you, to help. The Janus coin – no-one should have to deal with that. It wasn’t justice; it was fucking horrible, Helena. They should never have been able to do that to anyone. And I should have realised even before Yellowstone that you would need help. You were trapped inside your own mind for a century. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that you might have some issues to talk through. I also could have tried to find you after you disappeared, after the Sykes thing, and I didn’t. I thought about all of that when I was in the other world, and I came to the realisation that maybe it was kinder to just fall out of touch, to let you live your own life away from all of this chaos. But Helena – the other one – she said that I should still talk to you, that I should give you the choice. That you would want to know how I felt about you.” she finished almost in a whisper, and Helena leaned forward a little to catch her gaze.

“Myka, I think that you are taking responsibility for things that are not yours to bear. You did not Bronze me. I went into the Bronzer knowing what I was doing, and I brought all of that on myself. What happened afterwards was not your fault, either. If it was anyone’s fault other than mine, it was the Regents’. Because they are responsible, are they not, for the physical and mental well-being of their agents? And they did not look after mine. And after Yellowstone, you were perhaps more damaged than I, Myka. I did that to you. I betrayed you and made you think you couldn’t trust your own judgement. That I was punished harshly – that, again, falls on the Regents. I will not be too quick to agree to their judgement in future, I can tell you. But that wasn’t your fault, love. It was mine, and theirs. And I left, I ran. You blame yourself for not finding me? Why not blame me for running? It was my cowardice that created that particular situation. After the astrolabe was safe I could have come back, but I chose to run. Don’t blame yourself for things that I brought about, or brought upon myself. I will aim to act in a more measured fashion in future, and perhaps I will manage to stay in the Regents’ good graces. With you as my guide, I will be perfectly well-behaved, I’m sure,” Helena finished, smiling, and Myka’s answering smile was shy, suddenly.

“Are we really going to do this?” she asked, and Helena smiled more brightly.

“I hope so, Myka,” she said, her voice husky and low.

“I’m giving you a lot here,” Myka said, finally. “My heart, my trust. Don’t hurt me. Not again, Helena.”

“I won’t,” Helena promised. Myka pulled at her arms, and she shifted, moving to sit a little closer to Myka on the bed.

“May I kiss you, Myka?” Helena asked, gently. Myka nodded, swallowing, and Helena leaned forward slightly to touch Myka’s lips gently with hers. It was tentative, as first kisses are wont to be, but it wasn’t long before it grew, and Myka slid her arm around Helena, pulling her a little closer. They began to touch each other reverently, fingers touching hands, arms, necks, shoulders, ghosting along knuckles and tangling in hair. There were small gasps of ‘I love you,’ moans and teeth in fists, breaths coming in short puffs as hands and mouths found new places to write love poems on skin and bone.

Later, as they rested together, Helena murmured in Myka’s ear.

“I don’t know what I was so frightened of.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Myka whispered, tangling their fingers together, turning Helena’s fingers over in her hand, kissing her palm. “I’m just pissed that I had to go to another universe before you would admit you love me!”

Helena looked at her, slightly outraged, but then her face relaxed into a smile.

“Underhanded though her tactics might have been, I’m grateful to your counterpart for bringing me here. Without her, I might have missed out on the greatest joy this century has offered me,” she said softly.

“How underhanded are we talking here, Helena? Do I need to get that locket and go over there, leave her a stern note?”

Helena laughed.

“I’d rather you stayed right here, darling, if that’s okay. But let’s just say that pregnancy appeared to have a side effect for her, other than the morning sickness, and I woke one morning to find myself in a rather compromising position. Which was a surprise given that we’d gone to sleep in separate beds. Unfortunately, the vagaries of a pregnant woman’s bladder meant that she had to get up in the middle of the night, and in her sleepy state she got back into the nearest bed, which was mine. And so that morning I woke having a rather intimate massage,” she finished, with a chuckle.

“Are you serious?” Myka asked, her mouth open.

“I’m afraid so. I was half asleep and wasn’t quite sure what was happening, and I turned over to find my hands rather full with a pair of breasts that I didn’t remember Nate possessing, which was when I remembered where I was. And then I fell out of bed and onto my bottom, and that is where the story ends, because the shock of all of that led to the poor woman throwing up for the next twenty minutes or so, and then crying for the next thirty minutes after that. Which put rather a dampener on things, I’m afraid,” she said, with a mock sigh. 

Myka threw her head back and laughed, a real, true belly laugh. Helena joined in, and her throat, bared, was irresistible, so Myka didn’t try to resist it. She kissed Helena’s neck delicately, sucking at the place where her neck and jaw met, and Helena made a soft groaning sound that did unspeakable things to Myka.

“She did that, you know,” Helena mused, quietly, and Myka stopped what she was doing for a second, leaning up on her elbow.

“She did what?” Myka asked, a half-smile on her face.

“In Boone, she asked me what I was doing there, with Nate, when I was in love with you. I said I wasn’t, and she pulled me to my feet,” Helena said, and she pulled Myka out of bed with her to demonstrate. “She pulled me to my feet, and she did this,” she said, standing next to Myka, her lips just next to Myka’s. “She said ‘tell me again that you don’t love me. Tell me that you don’t want me,’ and then she turned her head a little, started sucking on my earlobe,” Helena said, before demonstrating, and Myka took in a shaky breath, because even after making love to Helena, she was still powerless to fight this feeling when they were in close proximity, let alone when Helena was sucking on her goddamn earlobe. “She did that, and then she moved her lips here, and carried on like this, and on the way past, she kissed me, just a brush of lips. All the while she was saying things to me about how I was lying to myself, lying to her, to you, to everyone, and that I wanted this, I wanted you,” she continued, kissing her way up the other side of Myka’s jaw before grasping her earlobe. She tugged on Myka’s hair, pulling it gently but firmly, and Myka could swear that every single hair on her body was standing on end. “She said she’d been thinking, on the journey to Boone, about why I would be hiding there, and she’d come to the conclusion that I was feeling guilty about Yellowstone, about the Trident, and I wanted a family. And she told me that I could have that, with her – or rather, with you, if I came to my senses. And then she kept doing things like this,” Helena continued, moving her lips to Myka’s collarbone and sucking, and then biting. “And then, I was trying to protest, to tell her that I didn’t want her, that I wasn’t in love with you, and she did this,” she said, sucking at the juncture of Myka’s neck and jaw. Myka moaned, much more loudly than she would have wanted or expected to, because she was painfully, painfully turned on and Helena was still sucking, still pulling her hair, still stroking the back of her neck gently…

“I said ‘Please,’ which I think by then I’d said five or ten times, and I honestly couldn’t have said what I was asking for, but that last time I was lost, Myka. I was so incredibly turned on that I could barely stand, and she knew I was asking her to kiss me. And she did, she kissed me, and I couldn’t hold back, Myka, because she was _you_ and she was kissing me with this incredible passion and I knew, right then, that I was coming back here, and that I was coming back to you, even if you didn’t want me.”

Myka stared at her for a moment, and then she threw herself at Helena, kissing her so incredibly passionately and clumsily that they were both gasping for breath and then moving back towards the bed and then they were tangled together, crying out, lost in each other again and again.

A few hours later, they woke up and after a protracted period when they couldn’t stop kissing each other, they decided to join the others for dinner. After showering, they went downstairs, unsure of how to share their news with the others. As they entered the dining room, however, Claudia led the rest of the team in a round of applause. There was a banner on the wall saying “Congratulations,” and a cake which had a message that verged on pornographic, making Helena chuckle. Myka blushed prettily at the sight but Claudia and Pete grabbed her up in a three-way embrace that went on for a long time, with the two of them murmuring their congratulations. Myka surprised herself by crying, and in the end Claudia and Pete joined in.

“Thank you,” Helena said, after the crying had abated. “You have looked after Myka in my absence, you’ve supported her through the pain that I put her through. I can’t thank you all enough,” she said, tears in her eyes as she looked at her Warehouse family.

The others rushed forward and they enfolded Helena in their hug. She was startled for a moment, but when Claudia whispered in her ear that they loved her just as much as they loved Myka, she too started to cry, and it took her a while to get control of herself. Claudia and Myka held her between them until she relaxed. Afterwards they all went to sit down, and Abigail brought in a tray with tea and coffee and the slightly pornographic cake.

They shared the cake and Pete lightened the mood by sharing a story of a recent snag where he’d been turned into a female version of himself. His tale of being chased by a horny trucker had them all in gales of laughter.

Claudia cleared her throat and they all gave her their attention.

“You guys know I don’t really do speeches, but I just wanted to say – I miss Leena, and I am kind of jealous that Myka met her again. But right now, it feels like we’re a family again, now that HG is here, and Myka is herself again, and Steve’s alive and well. I love you guys,” she said, and they all laughed when she added, “even you Artie, and Abigail. You guys rock.”

Myka looked around the room, basking in the presence of the people she loved, and in the warmth of Helena against her, and she wondered, briefly, how many other Mykas there were out there, and how many of those were as happy as she was in that moment. She toasted the Myka from the other universe silently with her tea, hoping that she and her Helena were as happy as she was right then. She would always owe them so much, for showing her and Helena what they could be if they only took the chance.

Infinite possibility was a strange thing to contemplate. Somewhere out there there was a Myka who was married to Pete, and somewhere out there Sam was alive and she was married to him. Somewhere out there, she was the one who had died that day, not Sam. Somewhere she was a pregnant mother of six, living in Colorado Springs on welfare. All things were truly possible. It was simultaneously terrifying and heartening. It made her feel like she could do anything at all. And having Helena next to her made her feel like, together, they could do anything they wanted. The woman next to her was almost 150, had survived being encased in Bronze for over a century, had died to save Myka, and had invented the genre of science fiction in a time when women were seen and not heard. Miracles were possible; this was the Warehouse, after all. Myka sighed happily and kissed Helena’s temple, snuggling in as they listened to Claudia and Steve bicker over who got to drive the Prius on their next mission. Endless wonder, and endless possibility. Myka Bering smiled.

 

* * *

 

 

In another universe, Myka Bering woke up in her bed, noting with relief and satisfaction that she was in her own room, with her wife asleep next to her. She knew she would have to get up soon, to have a checkup with Dr Calder and make sure the baby was okay. But for now, she wanted to kiss her wife, to make love to her. She woke Helena with soft touches, and when her wife woke, her eyes widened as she realised that her Myka had returned.

“I love you, Myka,” she whispered, and Myka kissed her. “I missed you so much, love.”

“God, I missed you too, honey,” Myka said, in between kisses.

“I thought you were never going to come back,” Helena said, gasping slightly as Myka bit her neck.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t have minded keeping the other Myka,” Myka teased. Helena reddened and drew back.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I shouldn’t…”

“Helena, stop,” Myka said, holding up a hand. “I am joking. I was thinking how hard it would be for you, if you met the other me and she was as heartbroken as I would have been if you’d turned me away. And I have to tell you – I didn’t exactly hold back, when it came to persuading the other Helena that she was wrong.”

“What did you do?” Helena said, in a mock-chastising tone, grinning at her wife.

“She told me she didn’t love Myka. So I showed her, in no uncertain terms, that I knew she was lying,” Myka said, unabashed. She knew Helena would understand and agree with her tactics; had things been the other way round, Helena wouldn’t have hesitated to persuade Myka in the same fashion.

“I was just so… pissed off, you know? It was like she was trying to tell me that what you and I have isn’t real. And yeah, I know she was talking about her and the other Myka, but I saw red, and once I was done kissing her, she could barely walk straight,” Myka said, her mouth twisted a little smugly. Helena laughed richly, and pulled Myka down to her, kissing her soundly.

“I love it when you get all… domineering,” Helena said, running a finger gently down Myka’s neck.

“I know you do,” Myka said, and she leaned forward, grabbed Helena’s finger in her mouth, and sucked on the fingertip, biting gently. “Now, are we going to get down to business, Mrs Bering-Wells? Because it’s been a few days and I am a pregnant woman with needs…”

They didn’t speak again for some time, but the rest of the B&B were made aware very quickly that Myka was home, and of how happy both spouses were about that development. Leena was in the kitchen and sighed, smiling slightly, as she activated the top floor sound-suppression system from the kitchen controls. (It had been installed not long after Helena arrived.)

When Myka came down a little from her amazing afterglow, she watched her sleeping wife in wonder. Meeting Helena had been a miracle. They should never have met at all – Helena George Wells should have been long dead before Myka was born. She didn’t know how things had gone for her counterpart when she returned home, but she hoped that Helena had realised what she was missing and had grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Myka idly wondered how many other universes there were out there. She knew there were theories of infinite universes, of infinite possibilities. She didn’t know whether to find the idea comforting or frightening. She hoped that no other Myka stumbled across a wishing artefact that ended up with her life being stolen again, for however short a time. The woman next to her was hers; her miracle, her possibility. She wanted to stay here forever, to raise a family with her wife. She unconsciously snuggled a bit closer to Helena and put her arm around her waist. There might be infinite possibilities, but she was keeping this one. She moved a little closer to Helena, kissing the back of her neck, and went back to sleep.

END

_(Ok, so technically it’s not the end. Because infinite universes, and all that. All will be revealed in the fullness of time. Thanks for reading!)_


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the real final part of this fic. In the process of writing the (first) final chapter, I asked @sistersin7 (to whom this fic is gifted) for her opinion on something. I don’t even remember what. But she asked me “Well, is Myka going to get home to her universe, or not?” My immediate answer was yes, because Myka was pregnant and how could I be that evil etc. Her response to that was - what if they stayed in the opposite universes? How would that play out? So this is my answer to that question. Thank you, as always, for reading. 

_Final Chapter #2_

* * *

 

It was Myka’s last night - or so they hoped. They had spent the day together, the whole team, and they all ate together, even Artie and Dr Calder, who he was apparently courting. In Myka’s world, they had married many years ago, but she didn’t mention that to them. She was fine trying to influence Helena – after all, she knew that Helena was hiding from what she really wanted. But Dr Calder and Artie would find their own way, or they wouldn’t.

They toasted to absent friends, and Myka choked back tears. Leena was really gone, here, but she was alive and well where Myka was from. It was so unfair. Helena saw her get upset, and wordlessly took her hand and squeezed it. Myka smiled at her gratefully. All too soon, however, it was time for her to go to the Warehouse to try again. She kissed and hugged them all, but she still wasn’t sure if this was going to work. Despite Mrs Frederic’s assertion that she would know when it was time to try wishing on the locket again, something didn’t feel… right.  

 

* * *

 

She and Helena drove to the Warehouse in silence, and Helena courteously fetched the electric stagecoach so she didn’t have to make the long walk to the HG Wells section. When they got there, Myka stood there nervously, turning the locket over and over in her hands.

“So, I guess this is goodbye,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Helena said. “Are you sure it’s going to work this time?”

“Not at all,” Myka said with a frown. “I hope that Mrs Frederic knows what she’s talking about. But if I do go back – are you gonna think about things, about everything we talked about? Because I really think you could be happy here, Helena. With Myka.”

“I promise. I will think. I will talk to Myka. But I don’t appreciate the way you railroaded me into coming here.”

“Oh, please,” Myka said dismissively. “If you weren’t attracted to her, if you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t have come. So maybe I gave you a bit of encouragement, but if you didn’t want her, you wouldn’t be here at all.”

Helena looked at her sternly for a moment, before her expression softened.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said reluctantly, looking at her folded hands.

The locket felt strange in her hands, and she looked at it, waiting for a sign, for anything that would tell her when the time was right. She couldn’t feel anything, a vibe, whatever, to indicate what was best. She decided to try again anyway. Nothing had gone wrong the first time; it simply hadn’t worked. Trying it again couldn’t hurt, right?

“It’s time, Helena. Good luck,” she said, leaning forward to kiss her gently. Helena kissed back, her lips soft, and she sighed as Myka moved away.

“Goodbye, Myka. I hope you get home to your wife,” she said, and Myka nodded. She closed her eyes and held the locket tightly, picturing her life, her wife, Leena, her friends. The locket started to heat up in her hand, and she thought it was working. But the heat increased too much and suddenly there was something like sand slipping, pouring through her fingers. She opened her hand and found that the locket had dissolved, crumbled into dust that swirled and coalesced and then disappeared under the harsh lights of the Warehouse. She stood looking at the picture of Christina in her hand, somehow intact despite the destruction of the artefact that had housed it. The locket was gone; destroyed. Used up. Its purpose had been fulfilled. She realised as she stood there staring numbly at the picture in her hand that her counterpart had chosen, consciously or not, to stay in the other universe. With the Helena who loved her. Myka looked up to see this world’s Helena, a woman who had run from her life at the Warehouse and her love for Myka, and she saw the horror on her face as it dawned on her. There was no other way for Myka to return to her own world. There was no way for her to return to her wife, to her friends, to raise her baby with the woman she loved. She was alone in a universe where Helena had rejected her, where Leena was dead, and where she had no wife to raise her child with. She collapsed to her knees and heard the sound of her own cries, her own keening for the loss of everything she had ever known. Helena kneeled next to her and enfolded her in her arms, but it didn’t matter. Because Myka was exiled, lost, in a world that wasn’t hers. She could never go home.

 

* * *

 

Myka said her goodbyes, hugging everyone, holding on extra tight to Leena, who whispered in her ear again that her counterpart would be watching over Myka. Myka let the tears come as Helena drove them quickly to the Warehouse.  She truly didn’t want to leave. As much as she had tried to make her peace with Boone, with Helena’s choices, with the pain Helena had been through, she still felt abandoned, unloved. And this Helena – well. She was everything that Myka could ever have wanted.

All too soon they were standing in the spot where this had all started, Helena with her locket around her neck, and Myka’s hands wound around the chain.

“I think it’s going to work this time,” she said, with false cheer and an attempt at a confident tone, and Helena nodded.

“I hope so, darling.”

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Myka said, her eyes brimming once again.

“And I, you,” Helena said simply. “I hope that she comes to her senses, Myka. Because you are wonderful. I’ve never met anyone else who is your equal, Myka Bering. Your Helena is a fool if she does not choose you.”

“Thank you, Helena.”

They both felt it – the heating of the locket against their skin. They stared at one another for a long moment, Myka drinking Helena in, her eyes so bright and carefree, her heart open and sincere, love written all over her face. It had never been clearer to her that this was not her Helena, but a Helena who was unbroken by life, by tragedy. How she wished her Helena could be this open, this happy, this uncomplicated. Her Helena was a negative of this one; dark where her counterpart was light. Myka wished that life had been kinder to her Helena.

“Goodbye, Helena,” she said, before leaning forward to kiss her once more, fervently and insistently, tasting every inch of her mouth in case it was the last time, tasting her own tears as they fell between them. She broke away, leaning her forehead against Helena’s, and then concentrated on her own world, her own life, her family, broken and sad. The locket heated even more violently against the skin of her hand, and Helena muttered a soft curse. Suddenly, though, the metal changed, melted, breaking into particles of dust or sand, perhaps, and slipping through their fingers. Myka looked down to find that she was holding only a picture of Christina and some small grains of what was left of the locket; grains which were quickly reduced to motes that disappeared as she watched. And with them, her chance of returning to her own world.

Helena fell to her knees beside Myka, sobbing as she realised that her wife and her child were gone, lost to another universe. Myka joined her, holding Helena tightly as she realised this was her fault. She had wished this artefact into being, and it had fulfilled its purpose, spending its power and trapping another woman in a universe where she did not belong. The other Myka and her baby couldn’t return, and the woman in her arms had lost them because Myka had been too selfish to give her up. She held Helena tightly as her own eyes filled with tears of pure shame. She didn’t deserve to be here, and she had caused all of this chaos, breaking up a family in the process for her own ends. She didn’t deserve the regard of the woman in her arms, and she feared that she would now lose it forever. Her sobs mixed with Helena’s, their tears mingling with the dust motes left from the artefact. Myka was responsible for this, and she would never forgive herself.

 

* * *

 

It had been three weeks since the artefact’s demise, and Myka’s anguish at the loss of everything she’d ever known was now a dull roar in her head. She ate, she slept, she went through the motions, but she felt almost dead inside. Everyone she loved was gone. Or rather, they were gone but they were also here, but in very different forms. This world’s Helena was hovering over her, one hand always ready to catch her or check her temperature or… to do anything at all, really, to comfort or assist. The guilt of being the reason this world’s Myka had created the artefact in the first place was clear on her face, and her hovering was both comforting and irritating. But other than looking after Myka or comforting her, she never touched her.

Myka had gone to see Dr Calder to check that the baby was okay. Her own emotional pain was enormous, but the baby, while not an actual physical connection to her Helena, was certainly an emotional one. The baby was fine, thankfully, and once she’d wiped off the gel from the sonogram and redressed, cursing doctors and their propensity for making people undress for no good reason, Dr Calder confirmed that everything was fine with the baby, and that her blood work was all fine.

“Just keep taking the pre-natal vitamins,” Dr Calder said, her hand on Myka’s arm, comforting and compassionate, “and the baby should be fine.”

“Thank you,” Myka said dully.

“Agent Bering,” Mrs Frederic said.

“Yes?” Myka replied, again dully and with her eyes on the floor. She didn’t even react to Mrs Frederic’s sudden appearance at her doctor’s appointment.

“Agent Bering, I am very sorry to tell you that we have run out of options. All of the artefacts that might have returned you to your world… they have significant downsides; downsides that would result in the death of people you love. I am sorry to say that the Regents see no way to return you to your world without significant and painful repercussions for all concerned. I am so very sorry,” she said, taking Myka’s hand. It was so unlike the terrifying and distant woman that it snapped Myka out of her reverie.

“You were trying to find a way to send me back?” she asked, a spark of interest and curiosity making her head lift.

“Yes,” Mrs Frederic said, nodding. “The Regents felt it was imperative to make an effort to assist you, since it was in part their failings that led to Ms Wells making the decisions she did, which in turn led to this universe’s Agent Bering creating the artefact in her grief and pain.” Mrs Frederic sighed.

Myka looked at her, trying to make it all make sense in her head. After a few moments, she spoke quietly.

“I want… no, I demand, that the Regents do something for me. To make up for this.”

“Go on,” Mrs Frederic said, her eyes narrowing slightly. ‘Demand’ was not a word that people used to Mrs Frederic’s face.

“I want you to have them call Helena to a meeting. I want them to apologise to her, officially, for failing her, as you said. Failing to offer her any help when she came out of the Bronze, and then blaming her when she broke. And the Janus coin. I want apologies for all of it, and I want an official offer for her to rejoin the Warehouse as an Agent, with badge and gun and all the bells and whistles. She deserves that. And it could be the first step in really healing her.”

Mrs Frederic considered her carefully for a moment before speaking. Myka was resolute, her expression calm. This was not a demand made in anger, and Mrs Frederic nodded eventually.

“Most of the Regents are new, as you know, following the attack on their ranks by Mr Sykes. But I believe that Mr Kosan will join me with those who are left of the old guard, in apologising and offering a fresh start to Agent Wells. Will that suffice?”

Myka nodded.

“And you, Agent Bering? Do you wish to continue working for the Warehouse? Because of course you are not required to take the place of our Agent Bering. You can return to Colorado to live with your family, should you wish.”

Myka’s eyes widened.

“My family? They’re alive?” she asked, looking completely startled.

“Yes,” Mrs Frederic said, her eyes shining, suddenly.

“Okay. That’s… I need to process this. Thank you, Mrs Frederic. And of course I’ll stay with the Warehouse. I belong here.”

Mrs Frederic nodded, and Dr Calder squeezed Myka’s arm gently in support. By the time Myka had looked at Dr Calder and then back, Mrs Frederic was gone.

“Do you know anything about my family, Dr Calder?” Myka asked.

“I know the facts, Myka. You’d have to speak to your friends – her friends – to find out about your relationship with your family. Your mother and father live in Colorado Springs above a bookstore, called Bering and Sons, and your sister Tracy is married and pregnant, I believe. Other than that, as I said, you will need to speak to Pete and Claudia. I don’t know how much Helena knows of Agent Bering’s family, so she may not be any help,” Dr Calder said, and Myka nodded distractedly.

“Thank you,” she said, and she returned to the B&B in a daze, walking upstairs to her room and closing the door behind her, settling herself on the bed with her teddy in her arms. Her teddy was an incredibly important thing to her, because her mother had given it to her. Her mother, father and sister had died in a car accident on the way to Tracy’s graduation. Myka was already in training for the Secret Service then, and had had to leave and begin training again the following year because of the funerals, dealing with wills and property and selling the bookstore. It had been a dark year in her life, and now it was - erased, essentially. She had a family again.

A few minutes later there was a light knock on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” she said, distracted. Her mind was on her family as she’d last seen them. What would a grown up Tracy look like? Did her Dad still have his hair? Did her Mom look like Myka’s Grandmother?

“Myka?” Helena said hesitantly. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and she touched Myka’s hand, bringing her out of her reverie.

“Oh, hi, Helena,” she said, ignoring the way her heart leapt, an automatic response at seeing the face of the woman she loved. The face of the woman she loved on a woman who had deserted the other Myka, she reminded herself.

“Are you okay? Is the baby okay?” Helena asked anxiously.

“Yes, sorry. The baby is fine, and I’m fine. Everything went fine.”

“You don’t seem yourself, Myka. Is something wrong?” Helena asked, squeezing her hand.

“I… I got some surprising news. About my family, at home in Colorado. In my world, they were killed in an accident when I was in training for the Secret Service. I didn’t realise that they were still alive here. Mrs Frederic mentioned it, in passing, and I… I guess I don’t really know how to feel about it.”

“I understand,” Helena said. “That must have been quite a shock. Why don’t you come downstairs and I’ll make you some tea?”

“Okay,” Myka said, allowing herself to be looked after. She suddenly felt drained. When she stood she took Helena’s arm, leaning her head on her wife’s shoulder. No, not her wife. The woman who looked like her wife. Her wife was gone. She took a deep breath.

Helena sat her at the table and disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with tea and sandwiches.

“To keep your blood sugar up,” she explained, as Myka raised an eyebrow at the sandwiches.

“Did somebody say sandwiches?” Pete said, as he entered the room. He had a sixth sense for when food was being made somewhere in the B&B. He leaned down and kissed Myka’s cheek, a habit he’d developed since the artefact had dissolved into nothing. He, too, was protective and comforted Myka when he could. She was glad to see that the hint of expectation had disappeared, now. He was all ‘protective older brother’ since he’d seen her face the night the artefact had stranded her.

“So, in your world your parents and Tracy are gone?” Helena asked in a soft voice as she set sandwiches on a plate for Myka.

“Yes,” she said, and Pete whistled through his teeth.

“Wow,” he said, his eyes wide. “That’s a bit of a mindfuck right there, partner.”

She nodded. It still hadn’t entirely sunk in.

“Why don’t you go to see them?” Helena suggested gently.

“No,” Myka said, shaking her head. “I’m not ready for that, not yet.”

“Well, you could call them,” Pete suggested, his mouth full of Myka’s sandwiches.

“That’s… not a bad idea,” she said, thoughtfully. Perhaps speaking to them on the phone was a safer way to introduce herself to the idea. After all, she was pregnant and it was more than likely that she would burst into tears at the sight of her lost family.

“It’s a great idea,” Helena said, nodding at Pete. “It’s the best way to deal with it, really. You get to speak to them, but they don’t see you, and if you lose your composure, you can simply make your excuses and hang up.”

Myka nodded. Helena pressed some food on her, and she made herself eat some of the admittedly delicious sandwiches, mostly to make Helena happy, she had to admit. She chased the sandwiches with tea and afterwards went to lie down, Helena next to her, reading, in the library. She had a nap and when she woke she was ready to talk to her parents.

“Hello,” her dad’s voice was brusque, as usual.

“Dad?” she said, her heart leaping at the sound of his voice.

“Myka?” he replied, sounding confused. “Is everything okay?”

Her heart felt like it was burning in her chest. Like there was a beautiful flame in there, burning away the pain of her loss, of the cold emptiness of grief, of being orphaned in one fell swoop.

“Nothing, Dad. I just missed you guys and I wanted to see how you are.”

His voice was surprised, but gentle. “That’s nice. We’ve been missing you too. We were talking about you last night at dinner. Tracy and Kevin came by for dinner. She’s about ready to burst…”

They talked for a few minutes before her Dad called her Mom to the phone, and they talked, too, for another ten minutes or so. When she hung up, after having made a tentative plan to go and see them at the next holiday, which was Easter, she thought vaguely, she took a deep breath. She would have to explain the pregnancy part, somehow. Since in this world she was single. She sat in silence for a long time after the call, Helena next to her, holding her hand.

“Are you all right, Myka?” she asked, eventually.

“Of course,” she said vaguely, her mind still elsewhere.

“Is there anything I can do, love?” Helena said, and Myka sighed. She put her head on Helena’s shoulder, an automatic movement, and Helena pulled her close, wrapping her arms around Myka. They stayed there for a while. How long, Myka wasn’t sure, but they were interrupted by Abigail calling them through for dinner.

After dinner, which Myka barely touched, she left everyone at the table talking, her mind still in Colorado. It was an hour or so later when Helena knocked on the door and came to check on her again. Myka was momentarily irritated, but she called out for Helena to come in, and smiled wearily.

“How are you feeling?” Helena asked, her hands fluttering at her sides, as if she wanted to reach out and touch Myka. Suddenly, Myka was furious.

“What do you want, Helena?” she asked, snappily.

“I… I just wanted to see how you’re doing. You’ve had a shock, and you need to be looked after…” she said, trailing off uncertainly.

“I don’t need to be looked after,” Myka said, practically in a hiss. “I’m a grown woman. So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you back in Wisconsin?”

Helena looked even more uncertain.

“I… I thought you might want me, here.”

“Never mind what I might or might not want, Helena. Why are you here? What do you want from me? What do you want for you?”

Helena looked at her carefully for a moment, sensing the depth of her anger, perhaps, and took a deep breath before answering.

“I don’t know, Myka. I was ready to talk to Myka from this world, to work things out. But this… I didn’t expect this, Myka. You’re pregnant and you’re married to your Helena, and it looks like you’re staying here, and I don’t know what to… I don’t know how to help. How to fix that. And I don’t know what you want from me, Myka.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking defeated. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Myka’s mind was racing. The whole thing was a mindfuck. Her wife was gone; her life was gone. Her friends were still here, but in different forms. She had gained her entire family, a family who had died years ago. And there was a different version of her wife standing in front of her, offering… offering what, exactly?

“Do you want me, Helena?” she asked quietly. Helena looked up from her intense surveying of her fingernails.

“I… yes, I do, Myka.”

“Even though I’m not her?”

“Yes,” Helena said. She was looking at Myka and her eyes were shining with… something. Not quite love. Not quite desire. But awe, perhaps?

“You want me, for me?” Myka asked, this time looking at Helena, searching her eyes.

“Yes,” Helena breathed, and Myka moved forward, lunging, really, and somehow despite her general lack of coordination and her state of confusion, she managed to find Helena’s lips with her own, and with a groan borne of pain and desperation and weeks of pent up rage and sexual frustration, she practically dragged Helena to the bed, stripping them both naked, making frustrated little grunts when Helena’s jeans wouldn’t come off because they were so tight. Myka moved Helena roughly, pulling her limbs to where she wanted them without much regard to how said limbs were supposed to move, but Helena didn’t seem to care, because she was moving against Myka with as much abandon as Myka was moving against her. Their hands found each other and fingers slipped inside, almost simultaneously, and they were both groaning and crying out, lost in a moment that was as much catharsis as it was sex or love or anything else. They had each been waiting for the other to speak up, to talk about what was between them, what they could be to one another despite the shadows of their other selves that would always, always be there, waiting in the wings for their time in the spotlight.

Afterwards, Myka couldn’t help but cry, and Helena held her and kissed her, wiping away her tears and asking anxiously if she’d hurt Myka.

“No, I just… It’s so much, Helena. My family being alive, my friends being so different, you being… it’s a lot.”

“I know, darling. I wish that I could help. I feel useless,” Helena said, rubbing her back gently.

“You are helping, Helena. I just… I need you to decide. If you’re staying or not. I’m having a baby. It’s kind of a permanent thing, you know?”

Helena nodded, her eyes darker than Myka had ever seen them.

“I’m staying, love. Of course I’m staying. I can’t leave you like this.”

“I don’t want you to stay out of pity, Helena,” Myka said, bristling, and Helena kissed her forehead.

“That’s not why I want to stay.”

“Then why?” Myka asked. She was so tired of feeling uncertain and vulnerable and lost.

“You, Myka. I love you,” Helena said. Myka closed her eyes.

“You love me, or you love her?”

“I love you. Both of you. All of you. I love Myka Bering, or Myka Bering-Wells. I love you, every version of you, and I will spend the rest of my life loving you and caring for you and this child if you will let me, Myka.”

Myka breathed out a sigh of relief.

“I love you, Helena.”

Myka kissed her, delving and deep and hard and soon they were rocking against one another again, giving and taking what they needed from one another. It wasn’t quite love, not yet. It was something more visceral, more needy, more rough. But they gave and took from each other with open eyes, and Myka trusted that this Helena, while not her wife, would still love and care for her and her child. Myka came as roughly as she had begun, Helena’s fingers insistent inside her, and it felt like relief and safety all at once.

 

* * *

 

Myka was lost in shame and misery. Helena was in agonising pain at the loss of her wife and child, and although she was still wonderfully caring, her pain was clear. Each time Myka found her crying or saw her looking out of the window at the tree in the garden where she and her Myka had kissed for the first time, it was like someone had grasped her heart in a vice. Helena didn’t deserve this; didn’t deserve to lose everything because Myka was selfish. It was unconscionable and she could not forgive herself.

Helena was at the Warehouse, working to distract herself. The team here were a little wary of Myka, she thought, and she thought they had a right to be. She had been so selfish, wishing for a Helena who loved her, and failing when she tried to use the artefact to fix what was broken. She wasn’t worthy to be a Warehouse agent.

The day after the artefact had failed, she had started running. Literally. She found the other Myka’s running gear and she took off in the morning before Helena woke up. Some days she stayed away all day; not running the whole time, of course, but at least a few hours a day. Some days she just waited until she knew Helena was at the Warehouse. She tried to be around in the evenings, tried to talk to Helena, tried to be there. But the guilt was crippling her. Even when she ran it was wrapped around her throat, like a vine, stopping her from breathing clearly, from seeing ahead of her. She was heartbroken, too, at the loss of her old life, of her own family. Because her family in this reality had died when she was in training for the Secret Service. She hadn’t even been able to process that loss yet; it was too much to take in.

She sat down on the comfortable sofa in the library, the one she and Helena used to share in her original reality, before everything had gone to shit with Yellowstone and Emily Lake and Nate. She missed her Helena, too. Her Helena was different from this one – so much darker and harder. But she was the one Myka had fallen in love with first. It was all so confusing. Myka wasn’t sure how she could fix any of this, how she could make a life here. She’d screwed everything up so royally in this reality. She’d destroyed Helena’s life. How could she ever come back from that? How could Helena even still want anything to do with her? She did, of course. She was such a nice, open, loving person that she still wanted to spend time with Myka. It was Myka who didn’t know how to spend time with her.  

“Hi,” Leena said, walking into the library with tea and fresh cookies on a tray. She had been Myka’s rock, this last few weeks. Helena had been wonderful, but she was extremely distracted and saddened by what had happened, and although Helena didn’t blame her, Myka blamed herself enough for them both. It was, therefore, hard to be around Helena. Because every single breath or word reminded Myka of what she’d done.

“Still beating yourself up, huh?” Leena asked.

“I guess,” Myka said, smiling faintly.

“You know, she doesn’t blame you,” Leena said, watching in amusement as Myka distractedly ate an entire cookie in two bites.

“Huh?” Myka asked, her mind still on Helena, on blaming herself.

“I said, Helena doesn’t blame you. Not at all.”

“How can she not?” Myka said, incredulous.

“She doesn’t blame you. She told me that she might have done the same in your position. She told me that she told _you_ that,” Leena said, and she sounded a little exasperated.

“She did. She said that. But come on, that was before my selfishness resulted in her losing her wife and child forever. Mrs Frederic said there’s nothing else to do; they’ve checked every artefact that might help.”

“I know, Myka. Helena knows that too. And she hasn’t changed her mind, Myka. She understands that you can’t help how you feel, that it’s nearly impossible to make a wish if you don’t mean it. She is grieving for her wife and her child, of course. But she cares about you too. And I know how weird this all is, but Myka… she needs you. And I know you feel guilty. But right now you feeling guilty and blaming yourself – it’s counterproductive. She needs your support, your comfort – your love. So could you, for my sake, just hold her and kiss her and do whatever you need to do to comfort her? That woman… she’s not the same as your Helena. She went through the Bronze, but she didn’t come out hardened like your version… in some ways she came out softer. She depends on Myka. Myka holds her together, keeps her grounded and sane. And for better or worse, you’re the nearest thing to her wife. So – and I don’t say this lightly – get over it, Myka. She needs you, and you’re failing her because you’re focused on how much you’ve already hurt her. You can obsess about it later. For now, help her. Please.”

Myka was a little taken aback. Her world’s version of Leena had been softer than this. She would never have said “Get over it,” in any situation. But she was right. Myka was indulging herself. She had been for weeks. She’d been sulking, hiding away, and leaving Helena alone. They hadn’t touched since the artefact’s demise. And Helena had told her, back when she’d first come here, that Myka was her rock, her steady ground. Her support. And Myka had taken that away because she was brooding about the mistake she’d already made.

She ate another cookie, forgetting about her aversion to sugar, as she thought about her behaviour. She washed it down with the rest of the tea, and then stood.

“Leena, can I borrow your car?” she asked.

“Sure,” Leena said, smiling. She fished the keys from her pocket and threw them to Myka.

Myka drove to the Warehouse, rehearsing what to say. Apologising seemed like a good start. For the brooding, for not supporting Helena. And… there was an oak tree, near a small tributary of the local river. It was a risky idea; it might upset Helena more than it helped. But it might just help her – help them both - to look forward instead of back.

She got to the Warehouse and went through the scans, retinal and fingerprint, before stopping to ask Claudia where Helena was. She didn’t see Claudia’s smile as she practically ran to find Helena, who was doing inventory near the Dark Vault. When she found her, Helena was lost in thought, her eyes streaming with tears again, as she wrote on a clipboard. Myka’s stomach gave that familiar clench of guilt and pain at what she’d caused Helena, but she squashed it, pushed it down with an effort. This was about Helena, not her.

“Helena?” she said softly, and Helena looked up with a start.

“Oh, hi Myka,” she said, wiping her eyes and dredging up a smile from somewhere. She still looked beautiful, despite her wan face and the dark shadows under her eyes, and Myka’s heart stuttered at the sight. “What are you doing here? I thought you were staying at the B&B today.”

“I was. But then… I needed to see you. So – would you come with me?” she asked, smiling and holding out her hand.

“Of course,” Helena said, puzzled.

Myka drew her through the Warehouse, smiling vaguely at Claudia on the way past, and they got in Leena’s car. Myka drove them back to the B&B and led a bemused Helena to the massive oak at the bottom of the garden.

“Sit,” she said, and they both sat under the tree, a tiny tributary trickling nearby, lending its tinkling music to the serenity of Leena’s garden.

“What’s wrong, Myka?” Helena asked, looking concerned. She went to take Myka’s hand but at the last moment, pulled back. Myka observed, and felt even more horrible about the way she’d been behaving. Helena was frightened to touch her because she’d been so distant. Myka reached out gently and took Helena’s hand, instead. Helena smiled at her hesitantly.

“I owe you an apology,” Myka said softly.

“Myka, I’ve told you, you don’t need to apologise for that. I…” she broke off, sighing.

“I’m not apologising for that, Helena,” Myka said. “I mean, I am sorry about it, and I probably will feel guilty until the end of time. But what I’m apologising for is that I have been dwelling on it. I’ve been brooding, and I’ve been withdrawn and distant and dammit Helena, you even told me yourself how much you need your Myka, how much she grounds you, and I still did it. I compounded the error by dwelling on my own pain and making things even worse for you. So I brought you here to start over. I screwed up, and I want to make it up to you.”

Helena smiled at her, and it was like the sun coming up.

“You don’t need to…”

“I do, need to,” Myka interrupted gently. “You are an incredible woman, Helena. Worth crossing universes for,” she said, grinning at Helena’s eye-roll, “and I have been failing you. So I’d like to start again. I know that you and your Myka had your first kiss under that tree,” she said, indicating the other large tree further up the garden, “and I thought maybe we could take that theme and run with it - start again, here.”

Helena looked at her, her eyes sad.

“I miss her. So much, Myka. But then I see you… and I want to kiss you. I feel like I’m cheating, with my own wife.”

“I know, Helena. This is a completely insane situation; we both know that. But we’ve been told that, barring a miracle, this is where we are. So we might as well make the best of it,” Myka said, rubbing her thumb across Helena’s knuckles soothingly. “I want to make you a promise. While I’m here, you’re not alone. I’m here for you, in whatever capacity you need. I care about you, a lot. And I guess you know, since I was in love with my Helena… it’s hard to not be in love with you. And I don’t want you to feel under pressure or anything, but I just want you to know. Whatever you want, whatever you ask, whatever you need… I’ll say yes. Always.”

She paused for a moment and then leaned forward, just enough to reach Helena’s cheek with her lips, inhaling Helena’s scent, breathing in softly and chuckling quietly as she felt Helena shiver a little against her. She turned her head, a question in her eyes, and after a moment Helena closed the gap between them. They shared a kiss that was soft, not insistent or harsh or desperate. It was just, as Myka had said, a promise. Helena sighed and shifted a little, and Myka held out her arm. Helena moved closer and Myka enfolded her in her arms.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Helena murmured, and Myka agreed, kissing her hair and inhaling the scent. She had always loved how Helena smelled. It was the first thing that had alerted her to her attraction to Helena. You didn’t tend to think that way about female friends. You might want to know what perfume they wore or what brand of shampoo they used, but you wouldn’t want to get close to smell their hair again. It made Myka smile to remember how starry-eyed she was at meeting _the_ HG Wells. It seemed like such a long time ago.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Helena said.

“I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be,” Myka said, honestly. Helena sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of contentment.

It was a start. She couldn’t fix what she’d done, but it was a start.

 

* * *

 

Myka was six months pregnant. It was almost midsummer and it was horrifyingly hot. She knew she was probably a complete nightmare to live with, but she didn’t care. She was pissed off, tired, hot, and she felt like a manatee trapped on land.

She was sitting in the garden, on a reclining chair that Helena had made specially to fit her burgeoning body. There was a mechanism to raise it up and help her stand, and it was made of some sort of miracle material that her body sank into. It stayed cool in the heat and soothed her aching body. Helena had been a revelation, these past few months. They’d started off as adversaries in Boone, but since then, since they’d slept together the first time, when Helena had let Myka take what she needed, their relationship had become _more_. More tender, more loving. Myka was beginning to feel almost as secure and content as she had in her old world. And to add to both her confusion and her contentment, she’d gone to Colorado to spend Easter with her family. The family she’d lost years ago in her universe. Tracy had her baby a few days before the holiday so Myka got to spend a little time with the newborn, who they’d named after (this world’s) Myka’s dead boyfriend, Sam. Samuel Warren Fletcher. The little guy was wrinkled and pink and produced the most astonishing quantities of liquids from both ends. Myka had been repulsed at the beginning, since her first trimester nausea had not entirely abated, despite the promises of Dr Calder. But Helena was in her element, and she’d taught Tracy a few tricks about breastfeeding that had made things a lot more comfortable for her.

Her family had taken to Helena like she’d been around all their lives. She had turned on the charm, and Myka had watched in awe as first her mother and then her father fell under the onslaught. Helena had flirted shamelessly with Jean, and with Warren she’d won him over by talking about the time in which HG Wells had lived and how that had contributed to ‘his’ inspiration, something she had allegedly studied extensively. Myka chuckled to herself as her Dad grew starry-eyed, and when Tracy caught her watching, she laughed, wagging a finger at Myka.

“You’ve got it bad, you know that?” Tracy said, taunting, and Myka reddened. She did, indeed, have it bad, and for _this_ Helena. This Helena who was interacting with her family, who was winning them over for Myka. This Helena who had taken a deep breath and jumped in with both feet, even though there were all sorts of reasons why Tracy’s new baby would upset her, reminding her of Christina and all that she had lost. Myka missed her Helena, sometimes so intensely that she felt like her heart was twisting in her chest, but she’d had to face facts, to accept what had happened, and now her feelings for this world’s Helena were strong and complex.

“So are you two getting married before the baby is born?” Tracy had asked, and Myka had smiled shyly.

“I know you wear the ring already, but unless there was a ceremony and we didn’t hear about it, you guys haven’t tied the knot yet, right?”

“You’d have to ask Helena about that,” Myka had murmured, watching Helena sing to the baby, a lullaby she’d used to sing to Christina. In her world, Helena had begun to sing it to her belly every night before bed. Myka’s eyes filled with tears at the memory.

“How are you feeling, darling?”

Myka jumped, and her mind returned to the present.

“Would you not sneak up on the pregnant lady, please?” Myka asked, her heart pounding. Helena apologised, smiling.

“I’m okay, thanks. A little hot,” Myka admitted.

“I brought you some iced tea,” Helena said, and passed her a sweating glass filled with ice and tea and all sorts of fruit. Abigail was doing her utmost to make sure Myka was well nourished, despite her distinct lack of cooking skill, and that meant lots of fresh fruit.

“It’s hot out here. You should go inside. The air conditioning is working again,” Helena said, and Myka breathed a silent sigh of relief. Helena and Claudia had taken it upon themselves, the previous day, to try to ‘improve’ the air conditioning, and as a result had made several rooms in the B&B uninhabitable due to some sort of deadly gas they’d accidentally created.

“I will. I was just enjoying the sun. Vitamin D is important,” Myka said, and Helena smiled, sitting next to her.

“How was the Warehouse?” Myka asked. Helena had been offered reinstatement, and given a formal apology from all of the Regents who were in place when she was unBronzed. She’d eventually decided to become an Agent again, and Myka was heartened by how much she’d improved since then. She was a different woman to the one Myka had met in Boone. She was serene, confident, and content. The apology from the Regents had helped enormously, and she’d been seeing Abigail on a regular basis to deal with her grief and pain from Christina’s death and her Bronzing.

“It was fine, darling. Inventory, you know how it is. Alternating between boring and terrifying, depending on how closely one is working with Agent Lattimer with his propensity for touching things he shouldn’t,” Helena said dryly.

“Did he restrain himself today?” Myka asked.

“Only just,” Helena said. “I caught him in the cartoon aisle just before lunch. He wanted to talk to Bugs Bunny, he said. I told him if he caught me in a cartoon world, I wouldn’t just drop him off a cliff or paint a tunnel on a wall, I would eviscerate him, and he could see how his insides looked in cartoon form. He clasped his hands together behind his back for the remainder of the day,” Helena said, chuckling.

“What the hell did you do, to make him so terrified of you?” Myka asked curiously.

“I kissed him and then pulled his own gun on him,” Helena said, and then laughed when she saw Myka’s face darken. “Only to distract him so I could get away from you both in my old house,” she said, and then corrected herself, “I mean the other you. They were hunting me, because James MacPherson had freed me from the Bronze sector and they assumed that meant I was a villain. I was, of course, back then. But they didn’t know I was a woman, so I managed to distract Pete, the silly oaf, until Myka managed to catch me at gunpoint. After a little duplicity, I managed to use cavorite to stick them to the ceiling. Myka was most displeased about that, I can tell you,” she said, and Myka smiled. She would have been so pissed to have been caught out by an opponent, and probably secretly thrilled to have met her idol. Their lives had been so different. It was fascinating, when it wasn’t making her want to cry.

“Myka?” Helena said, hesitantly, and her tone made Myka’s head turn immediately. Helena was kneeling on the floor next to Myka’s recliner, a ring in her hand. Myka’s heart immediately started galloping.

“I know that technically, you are already married. And I know that if the opportunity ever arose, you would return to your world without hesitation. But what I would like to offer you is my promise, that I will be your faithful and loving partner for as long as you are here, and I will be a parent to your children, and that I will be a loving support for you always. So if you will consent, I have arranged for a small ceremony in Univille next week. No fuss; just us and the rest of the gang and your family, and a nice dinner afterwards. I love you, Myka, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if that is at all possible.”

Myka took a deep breath. This felt like hope and betrayal at once, and she didn’t know which to go with. She closed her eyes and thought of her Helena, and she knew that Helena would want this for her. Stability, love, support… she would want it, she would encourage it, she would applaud it. Because she was selfless and giving and a beautiful soul. And Myka needed this, on a level she couldn’t truly comprehend herself.

“Okay,” she said, taking her sunglasses off with her right hand so that Helena could see her eyes. “Let’s get married.”

Helena looked at her uncertainly for a moment, but when she saw only sincerity and happiness in Myka’s eyes, she smiled luminously. Myka looked at her ring finger, where her original wedding ring still sat, and after a moment, removed it and placed it on the ring finger of her right hand. She turned to Helena then and held out her left hand, wiping tears from her eyes with her free hand. Helena smiled at her again and placed the ring gently on Myka’s ring finger.

“I love you, Helena,” Myka said, and Helena leaned up and kissed her. Tears fell from their eyes until they could taste them, but they kissed anyway, because love and pain were intertwined now for them, in the same way that universes had intertwined to bring them together.

Helena was still conflicted and sad about all of this, but she had thought carefully before making this decision. Myka wanted her, she knew that, and she thought they might be building towards love, but there was more to consider. Myka was lost in a world not her own, and Helena knew a lot about that. She knew that the thing that mattered most was a tether, when one was lost. Myka Bering – the original from this world – had been her tether, and now it was time for Helena to return the favour for Myka’s counterpart. That she would be a parent again had made the decision doubly difficult. She loved children, of course, but it was very difficult for her to deal with the idea of children because of how she had failed Christina. Abigail had helped her with that, and after a time it became clear to her that she wanted, needed to be a partner for Myka, someone she could depend on. Love wouldn’t be a problem. They were almost there in any case, and time would take care of the rest. Marriage was a good first step, because it cleared up any uncertainty that still lingered about Helena’s intentions. Myka had every reason to be uncertain, she felt, after Helena had run away to Boone. But she was here now and she wasn’t leaving. She sighed as Myka smiled at her through tears, and reached up to kiss the woman she loved. The woman she was marrying. Things may not have started out in any sort of ideal way, but from now on she would be the woman that Myka deserved.

 

* * *

 

It had been a few weeks since Leena had talked to Myka about her behaviour, and Myka had, after a lot of consultation with the rest of the team, been spending a lot of time courting Helena. They’d been to art galleries, museums and restaurants, and they’d been to a variety of book readings and sporting events that Helena enjoyed. She was surprisingly into ice hockey, enjoying the brutality of it in a way that made Myka laugh. She cheered the broken-nosed players when they beat the crap out of each other, and it was so unlike what Myka would have expected from Helena that it delighted her.

They’d just attended a play that the local amateur theatre had put on, and Helena was humming as they walked, a bright smile on her face.

“Did you have fun?” Myka asked, squeezing Helena’s arm a little.

“Oh, yes. It was marvellous. I have missed the theatre. They were surprisingly good for an amateur troupe, don’t you think?” Helena enthused.

“I thought they were great. The orchestra was amazing. I’ve never seen Oklahoma before,” Myka said, smiling at how enthusiastic Helena seemed.

“Thank you for taking me,” Helena said, as they reached the door of the B&B. Leena opened the door, taking their coats from them and hanging them nearby.

“I left some tea and drinks in your room,” she said, hustling them upstairs so quickly that Myka wasn’t sure, when they reached the bedroom, that it had actually happened. Had Leena just sent them to bed? When they opened the door to the bedroom and stepped inside, Myka took a deep breath. Leena had sent them to bed for a reason. There were fresh flowers on many of the surfaces, lending the room a sweet fragrance, and there was tea and what looked like champagne in a bucket next to the bed. There was soft music playing in the background. Myka half expected Barry White, but Leena was a little more subtle than that. But only a little.

“Did you ask her to do this?” Helena asked, her mouth hanging open.

“No,” Myka said honestly. “I… I’m as surprised as you are.”

“I see. Well, Leena does like to take things into her own hands sometimes,” Helena said thoughtfully.

“It would be a shame to let it go to waste,” Myka said, smiling slightly, and raising an eyebrow at Helena.

“Would it, now?” Helena asked, her own eyebrows raised and a sly smile on her face.

Myka went to pour them both a glass of champagne, and she handed one to a bemused but smiling Helena.

“Are you okay with this?” Myka asked, taking a drink of the cold, bubbly liquid and smiling at Helena.

“Am I okay with drinking champagne with a beautiful woman in my bedroom? No, it’s terrible,” Helena said, a broad smile on her face.

“I mean… you know what I mean, Helena. I know you miss her,” Myka said, her eyes downcast. Helena lifted her chin with a finger.

“I do miss her, Myka. But you are here, and I am so very glad about that,” Helena said, her eyes on Myka’s, utterly sincere.

Myka looked at the woman she’d grown to love in such a short time, her heart filled with all of the things she hadn’t had the courage to say. She decided to take Leena’s unspoken advice, and she leaned forward to kiss Helena, giving her plenty of time to back away if that was her desire. It was not, plainly. She kissed back as if she had been waiting for this moment her whole life, and Myka heard her champagne flute hit the carpet as Helena pulled Myka to her, her hands suddenly in Myka’s hair, tangling at the curls and scratching at her scalp. It felt incredible, and Myka felt a rush of intense arousal as Helena’s tongue slipped into her mouth, tasting of the cold champagne. She, too, dropped her champagne flute, suddenly needing to feel Helena against her. She pulled Helena closer, running her hands up her slim but strong arms, feeling the muscles contract as Helena pulled at her scalp. She slipped one hand up into Helena’s hair, and when Helena bit her lip, she retaliated by pulling on Helena’s hair. Helena’s low groan pulled at her, and suddenly she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. She needed Helena more than she needed air, in that moment, and after pulling back for a moment to meet Helena’s eyes, she began to take off her shirt, pulling it over her head and throwing it into the corner of the room.

Helena began to undress, her eyes on Myka the whole time, and she was so incredibly beautiful that Myka could barely breathe. She half-dragged Helena to the bed and kissed her insistently. When she pulled away they were both red-faced and breathless.

“Is this okay?” Myka asked, suddenly anxious.

Helena laughed. “Are you serious, Myka? I’ve been waiting for you to do this for weeks. I need this. I need you.”

“Me, or her?” Myka asked quietly.

“You,” Helena said. “You and she are not the same, Myka, despite all appearances. My Myka was much more… domineering. She was harder than you, she was always the strong one. But I love you for all the ways that you are different. Your softness, your lack of certainty sometimes. That adorable snort you do when you laugh. And I love you for all the ways you are the same. Your heart. Your confidence. Your – what is it that Claudia calls it? – inner geek. I love you for all of those things, and so many more. You… you amaze me, Myka. I told you before, and I will tell you again. Whether it’s you, or the original Myka from this world – I love you. You amaze me, and I love you.”

Myka stared at Helena for a few seconds before leaning in to kiss her, taking off the rest of her own clothes and Helena’s as their kisses became more fervent, and they managed to make it under the covers before they were both crying out at the intensity of this moment, of the feelings that had been below the surface, of their need for each other. Myka had never managed to even kiss her Helena, and now here she was, making love to a version of Helena Wells that she’d never imagined existing. And Helena, after losing her family in one fell swoop, needed Myka, needed her close and inside and all around, to keep her grounded and sane. They moved with one another and found safety and release together. Helena held Myka close after they had tired themselves out, whispering in her ear about how precious she was, and Myka was overwhelmed. Both with the physical sensations, and the wonder of being here with a Helena who adored her. She managed not to cry, but it was close. She had everything she wanted here, in this bed, with Helena. But at what cost? She pushed the thought away, concentrating instead on the here and now, the love she shared with this woman. She had crossed universes to find Helena, and while she had regrets, being here, in this moment, was not one of them.

 

* * *

 

_Five years later_

Myka and Helena stood holding hands as they watched their daughter, Leena, walk into her classroom for the first time. She’d gone to kindergarten, of course, but this was elementary school and they were both thrilled and terrified. Their daughter was growing up, and that was great. That was what every parent wanted. But she was growing up, and it was happening so fast. Helena grimaced as Myka squeezed her hand a little too tightly.

“I know you’re nervous, darling, but do please try not to break my fingers. You’re stronger than you think,” Helena said, chuckling as Myka turned to apologise.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said, aghast, examining Helena’s fingers carefully.

“It’s all right, I’m just a little bruised, love,” Helena said. Myka kissed her fingers.

“What are we going to do without her at the B&B during the day?” Myka asked. 

“Well, we might actually get to have a shag every now and then,” Helena said in mock exasperation.

“You shut your pie-hole, Helena Bering-Wells. You get yours, and everyone in that B&B knows it,” Myka said, her eyes narrowing.

“All right, all right,” Helena said, holding up her hands in surrender. “It was a joke, Mrs Bering-Wells. You keep me well satisfied. No lesbian bed death for us.”

“Damn right,” Myka said, smiling in satisfaction. Helena smiled back, her grin wide, and they both laughed and then cried as Leena came running out of the classroom to kiss and hug them both and tell them that she would miss them, before running back inside.

It had been a long journey, Myka mused as they drove back to the B&B. Leena’s birth had been a traumatic one, and Myka had almost died from blood loss after the birth. Helena had been frantic, terrified that Myka had crossed universes only to die and leave her alone with a baby. Myka did survive, of course, and Leena had grown up to be healthy and happy – at least thus far. But Myka couldn’t have any more children. That had broken her heart, at first. Helena had helped her see that they were still a family, and Leena had cousins in Colorado – Sam and now a girl cousin, Christina. When Tracy had learned that Helena had a child, and that she’d passed away, there was no stopping her. Christina was almost 3, and she followed Leena around like a shadow every time they visited. Claudia was seeing a young man who used to work with Steve at the ATF, and it looked like they might get married soon. Pete, too, had met someone, a lovely woman who was a nurse at a clinic in Featherhead. Gina was a wonderful person, and her brand of calm empathy had settled Pete a lot.

Myka and Helena didn’t do retrievals any more, except for special occasions. Pete and Steve were still a team, and Claudia had almost finished her training to take over from Mrs Frederic. Artie was planning to retire within the next year. Dr Calder was getting impatient to retire, and that had been the largest factor in his decision. He’d never expected Vanessa to agree to marry him, so he’d been caught on the hop, somewhat, when she asked him when he was retiring so they could go on their honeymoon. Once he hung up his steampunk goggles, Myka and Helena would be taking over the running of the Warehouse. It had been Claudia’s idea for them to share the job, share the responsibilities, and for them both to stay out of the field.

“Leena needs her moms,” she’d said, finishing her argument with a flourish. Helena and Myka had exchanged rueful looks and shrugged, and it was agreed. Neither of them wanted to stop going out in the field. The excitement of solving puzzles together had brought them together, brought them closer, and had provided a firm foundation for their relationship to grow. But it was time, and they had a daughter who needed them.

“So, whatever shall we do with our free time,” Helena asked, twirling one of Myka’s curls around her finger.  

“I have no idea,” Myka said, sighing. Helena took her arm and led her back to the car, where she leaned over and kissed Myka thoroughly.

“I do – have an idea, that is,” Helena said, with a grin.

Less than half an hour later they were in their bed at the B&B. They made love and lay there, tangled in sheets, relishing the freedom to make love in the afternoon, enjoying the light streaming through the open windows.

“Do you ever miss her?” Helena asked, idly.

“Who?” Myka asked, confused.

“Your Helena,” she replied, her eyes dark and unfathomable.

Myka turned to her, her eyes bright in the morning sun.

“You _are_ my Helena,” she said, holding Helena’s eyes.

Helena kissed her fervently, and they made love until they had to dress, hurriedly, to pick up their daughter from school. Helena watched her wife drive the car, her hands making confident movements on the wheel. The muscles in her forearms tensed and released with her movements, and Helena couldn’t help but stare. Myka Bering-Wells was effortlessly sexy. She was different from the original Myka from this world, of course, but also the same in many ways. Her heart was the same; strong, beautiful, open. Two versions of Myka Bering had saved her from herself – the first, at Yellowstone, and the second, in a suburban home in Wisconsin. She couldn’t possibly have loved Myka more, and while the way things had happened was not ideal, she didn’t think she could be happier than she was, right now, in this moment. In any universe.

 

* * *

 

Helena watched as Myka took down the last of their opponents with a particularly devastating clothesline manoeuvre. She gave her partner a round of applause, and Myka turned to give her a slightly mocking bow.

“The cops can take care of these guys,” Myka said dismissively, placing the artefact, which caused extreme aggression in the bearer, in a static bag. It sparked impressively and the men on the ground – all seven of them – groaned as the influence of the artefact left them.

“You know, I never get tired of watching you do that,” Helena remarked as they returned to their SUV. Myka had finally given in and admitted that while she thought electric cars were the way forward environmentally, she preferred the larger SUVs because they gave her more leg room.

“Do what?” Myka asked, prying a stubborn tendril of hair from the corner of her mouth as she climbed into the car.

“Fighting the bad guys. Saving the day. You’re so… strong and dominant. I love it,” Helena said, feeling slightly breathless.

“Helena Bering-Wells, are you – as the lovely Claudia would put it – horny?” Myka asked, her mouth open in pretend shock.

“I’m afraid so,” Helena admitted, with a glint in her eye.

“I see,” Myka said, letting her free hand fall to Helena’s thigh, kneading slightly. “I might be able to help you with that,” she said, in a slow drawl. Helena’s breath caught in her throat.

It had been a long time since they’d had a chance to stay in a hotel overnight alone. The B&B was wonderful; Leena made sure of that. And there was a sound-cancelling system in place to give them some sort of privacy. However, they were always aware of the other inhabitants of the B&B, and it was difficult, sometimes, to completely lose oneself in the moment when a friend is only a thin wall away. Myka chuckled as Helena practically dragged her to their hotel room, stripping her before the door had even properly closed. Myka let herself be pulled into the extra-large bathroom, into the hot tub, and they enjoyed a hedonistic evening together, ordering room service and feeding each other dessert. Things got rather out of hand when the ice cream was added to the equation, but both were satisfied (if a little sticky) by the time they finally slept.

Before she fell asleep, Helena chuckled as she heard a sleepy Myka murmur, “you know, on reflection, the chocolate chips in the ice cream might have been a mistake.”

The following morning they woke up wrapped up in each other (and stuck together in some places). They spent a quiet morning together, showering and eating in silence, occasionally smiling at one another.

“You know, it’s been way too long,” Myka said reflectively. “I’ve missed this.”

“Me too,” Helena said, squeezing Myka’s hand. They were sitting at the small table in the hotel room, reading the morning papers and enjoying the view of Lake Erie from the balcony window.

“Do you ever miss it?” Myka asked.

“Miss what?” Helena asked, confused. She still hadn’t looked up from her paper.

“Your own world. Your wife, your baby. Your life,” Myka said softly.

Helena stayed silent for a second as she absorbed what Myka had said, and then her head snapped up. She looked at Myka almost severely, like a schoolmistress about to tell off a student. In any other circumstance, her expression would have made Myka chuckle.

“You _are_ my Myka,” she said insistently. “The Myka from this world was lost to me; just as lost as she would have been had she died. I have mourned the loss and I fell in love with you, for who you are. There are things that you share with her, and things that are different. You are a little softer than she was. You are – or were, at first – a little less certain than she was. But you are my life. You and I have been together for a long time, Myka. You and I have a life together that I did not share with the original Myka from this world, my love. I am sure that if she had stayed here, if things had not happened as they did, we would have been very happy. But I meant what I said all those years ago, love. I didn’t want you to go back to your universe, to a Helena who didn’t appreciate you, and while I missed her – and the idea of a child, because of course she was only a little pregnant at the time – our life together now is more than equal to that. You steadied me through the loss of her and the baby, and that was no easy feat. I was more unstable, more lost then, than I had been since Christina’s death. You make me so happy, my love. I would not – could not – want anyone else.”

Myka stared at her, her eyes filled with tears.

“I love you so much, honey,” she said, leaning over to kiss Helena fervently. “I love you.”

Helena moved to straddle Myka where she sat on her chair, and they spent an enjoyable ten minutes or so making out like teenagers.

“What about you?” Helena said, eventually. “Do you ever wish you’d been able to go back, instead of staying here?”

“No,” Myka said, shaking her head vehemently. “My regret is that I stranded the other Myka there, that I took your wife away from you, and I will probably never stop feeling the guilt of that. But me? I made a wish, inadvertently, for a Helena who loved me. And I found her. I found _you._ I don’t know what happened with my other self, with the universe that I came from, but I still believe that I got the best part of the bargain. I got an incredible woman who loved me like no-one else ever has. I found a family at the Warehouse. I got to find Leena again. And yeah, I lost my own family, and I won’t pretend that didn’t devastate me. But you, Helena – you changed everything for me. You made me believe I was worth something. Because if someone like you could love me, I must be worth something. And we have an amazing family and a job that we both love. I wake up some mornings and I still pinch myself, Helena. I will probably never stop feeling guilty about how I got here, but at the same time I can’t regret it. Because I have never been this happy.”

They kissed again, and after a time, they moved to the bed to finish what they’d started.

“Shall we go home then, Mrs Bering-Wells?” Helena asked, much later, and Myka nodded.

They got ready and took the interminable flight back to Sioux Falls, followed by a long drive to Univille. When they got home, however, they were re-energised by the shouts from the house. Pete and Kelly’s kids, Daniel and David – named after Pete’s father and uncle – were shouting at the top of their lungs, and there was a higher set of piping voices belonging to Christina and Samantha, Helena and Myka’s twins.

“Girls, your moms are home!” Leena announced, and Myka and Helena were soon met with a tornado of small children, shouting “Mom,” “Mummy,” and “Aunt Mykes” and Myka’s favourite, “Aunt Hels.” Pete had encouraged his boys to refer to Helena as Aunt Hels, and despite her initial objections, the nickname had stuck. She didn’t look terribly annoyed, Myka had to admit, watching her being climbed by their twins as the boys ran around her making whooping noises.

The twins had jet black straight hair, green eyes and pale freckled skin. They were the result of an accident in the fertility artefact aisle, and a clumsy Pete Lattimer. He’d tripped over the dodgeballs, again, and this time he’d been alone. The cascade of dodgeballs had ended up halfway down the Warehouse were Myka and Helena were working. Several fertility idols from a variety of ancient cultures had been dislodged from their shelves, and the resultant spike in artefact energy had caught both Helena and Myka in its grip. 9 months later Helena gave birth to the twins, who were a perfect combination of both mothers. It was, as Leena said at the time, as if the Warehouse wanted to give something to Helena after it failed to return her wife and child to her.

Myka and Helena made their way into the B&B slowly, encumbered by children and luggage and general chaos. They handed off the artefact to Claudia, who disapparated to the Warehouse with it before returning in time for dinner. She’d taken months to perfect her disappearing act after becoming Caretaker. Mrs Frederic had passed away quietly in her sleep and the link to the Warehouse had been passed to Claudia that same night. After some trial and error, she had managed to scare the shit out of every single member of the Warehouse team, including, to her great glee, Artie. (He pretended to have a heart attack the next time she did it, in retaliation, and she never did it again.)

Myka looked around at her little family, her wife, her children, Pete and his wife and kids, Claudia and Leena, Artie and Vanessa, and her heart felt like it was swelling. She had loved her world, had cared deeply for the other versions of these people. But something about this world made her feel like she truly belonged. She had meant what she said to Helena earlier – she was guilty about making the wish that brought her here. She was guilty for taking away Helena’s wife and baby. But she couldn’t truly regret it. She was happier than she’d ever been, and Helena seemed to be. They’d made a beautiful family together, and she couldn’t regret that. She had a feeling, too, that things in the other world had worked out in a similar fashion. She didn’t know why, but she felt like the other Myka was happy and content with her Helena; that they had somehow made things work out between them.

This Helena was so different from the original Helena from Myka’s world. Her circumstances were entirely different to the original Helena. Her daughter died too, but from disease, not human evil. She hadn’t therefore been consumed with the same kind of rage and hatred that had almost destroyed the other Helena. She was full of hope, even after the Bronze. The kind of hope that had made HG Wells’ novels such an inspiration to Myka when she was growing up. And she loved in such an uncomplicated way. There was no doubt in Myka’s mind that this Helena would do anything for her. In the original world, Myka and Helena’s relationship was fraught with betrayal, at Yellowstone and in Boone. Helena had a darkness to her that Myka felt like she would never be able to entirely forget. In some ways, by dissolving all those years ago, the artefact – the locket – had done them all a favour. Because the other Myka, the Myka who’d originally been in love with _this_ Helena? She would love the original Helena Wells, the one who had almost destroyed the world, in the same uncomplicated way she loved this Helena. And Myka didn’t think that the original Helena would be able to resist that Myka – a Myka who was both more dominant than the original, and who was pregnant and lost in a new world.

“Darling, could you grab Sam? She’s a bit huffy because Daniel doesn’t want to play with her because she’s younger than Christina. Bloody kids. They were born about 10 minutes apart, for God’s sake,” Helena said, with a smile.

“Sure, honey,” Myka said, and she went to find her huffy ‘younger’ daughter before all hell broke loose. She smiled ruefully before deciding that she definitely wouldn’t have it any other way. Infinite universes existed, but this one was hers, and she was keeping it, thank you very much.

**The (actual) end.**


End file.
